Preamble

The House met at a quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

Milford Docks Bill,

Bedwellty Urban District Council Bill,

Stretford Urban District Council Bill,

Lords Amendments considered, pursuant to the Order of the House of the 5th August, and agreed to.

Boland's Divorce Bill [Lords],

Read the third time, and passed, without Amendment.

Pembroke Gas Bill [Lords],

Read the third time, and passed, with Amendments.

Dover Gas Bill [Lords],

As amended, considered;

Ordered, That Standing Orders 223 and 243 be suspended, and that the Bill be now read the third time.— [The Chairman of ways and Means.]

Bill accordingly read the third time, and passed, with Amendments.

Birmingham Corporation Bill (by Order),

Lords Amendments considered, and agreed to.

Clyde Valley Electrical Power Order Confirmation Bill,

"To confirm a Provisional Order under the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, relating to Clyde Valley Electrical Power," presented by Mr. MUNRO; and ordered (under Section 7 of the Act) to be considered To-morrow.

PUBLIC WORKS LOANS.

Copy ordered, of Statement "of Particulars of Loans of which the balances outstanding are proposed to be remitted or written off (in whole or in part) from the assets of the Local Loans Fund."—[Mr. Baldwin.]

Oral Answers to Questions — WOOLWICH ARSENAL (SHIPPING BERTHS).

Lieut.-Colonel THORNE: 2.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, in consequence of there being so many ships that cannot get berths at the docks, some of the berths at the Woolwich Arsenal could be utilised with a view to relieving the present pressure; if he is aware that the berths at the Woolwich Arsenal are in direct connection with the South-Eastern Railway on the wharves; and if he will take action in the matter?

The DEPUTY-MINISTER of MUNITIONS (Mr. Kellaway): I have been asked to answer this question. I fear that the hon. and gallant Member's suggestion is impracticable. The 'berths in question will only accommodate very small vessels. The main pier is already used to its full capacity for Government purposes. There are no railway facilities for taking goods from the pier to the main line.

Oral Answers to Questions — SS. "CHEPSTOWE CASTLE."

Lieut.-Colonel THORNE: 3.
asked the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware that the ss. "Chepstowe Castle" was advertised to leave London on the 17th July for Capetown; that Messrs. T. A. Crombie sent down for shipment about £1,500 worth of goods to be put on board; that a good number of other export merchants did the same; that the merchants in question received a notice on 17th July to the effect that the ss. "Chepstowe Castle" would not sail before 21st August and that it would take cargo for Capetown, Algoa Bay, East London, Natal, and Mauritius; and if he will take action in the matter?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Bridgeman): I have been in communication with the Shipping Controller with regard to this matter. I understand that it was necessary to fit this vessel for the repatriation of South African coloured troops, and that the delay was partly due to this necessity, which was unavoidable.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE.

GOVERNMENT POLICY.

Mr. LEONARD LYLE: 5.
asked the President of the Board of Trade when he proposes to make his statement on the trade policy of the Government; and whether arrangements will be made for a full discussion of his proposals in the House before the Adjournment?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I am not in a position to add to previous answers on this question, except to say that the statement will not be made by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, but by the Prime Minister.

Captain W. BENN: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that a statement has appeared in the Press that this statement will be made on Wednesday week; is that accurate?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I had not observed it.

IMPORTS AND EXPORTS.

Sir J. D. REES: 9.
asked the President of the Board of Trade at what decision the Government has arrived in regard to the protest of the Nottingham Embroidery Manufacturers' Association against the decision of the Control of Imports Department of the Board of Trade to allow the ration of embroidery imports to be increased by 30 per cent. upon the figures of 1916 and to extend the period of such ration by two months?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I would refer the hon. Member to the answer which I gave last Thursday to a similar question by the hon. Member for the Central Division of Nottingham.

Sir J. D. REES: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this question is to ask what action has been taken on the protest. I do not understand that my hon. Friend's previous question dealt with that point?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I do not know what action, or that any action, has been taken.

Sir J. D. REES: Will my hon. Friend take action in the matter, which is of considerable importance to Nottingham?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: My hon. Friend knows that the whole of these matters
have been under review, and that a statement will be made in a few days of the whole trade policy of the Government.

Major HAYWARD: 13.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, in deciding the question of restricting the import of any individual article, the effect of such restriction on trade as a whole is considered; and, if so, what bodies are consulted to this end?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. The existing list of restrictions is due almost entirely to the recommendations of the Imports Consultative Council.

Captain W. BENN: Does the Imports Consultative Council represent the consumers as a whole, or a few interested parties?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: It represents a very large number of people, not all consumers, not all manufacturers, not all merchants—some of every kind.

Captain BENN: Would the hon. Gentleman say what representation the consumers have?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I answered the whole of that some days ago when the hon. and gallant Gentleman raised the question in Debate, and following the formation of the Council. He did not-pursue the question any further then.

Captain BENN: Have not considerable modifications been made in that Council since its formation, and who are responsible for these?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I cannot remember the exact date of the formation—

Sir S. HOARE: Did not the Council come to an end about two months ago?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: About that date.

Mr. KILEY: Have considerable modifications not been made since the Committee went out of existence?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I cannot say off-hand.

Mr. KILEY: On whose advice or recommendation were these modifications made? Have they not been made since the Committee went out of existence?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I cannot give a list of the particular modifications made; my hon. Friend bad better put down a question.

Mr. KILEY: Can the hon. Gentleman say on whose advice the modifications have been made since that date?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I cannot possibly say off-hand.

Captain BENN: Were they on the recommendations of individual manufacturers?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: My hon. and gallant Friend must give notice of that.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Of course they were.

Major HAYWARD: 14.
asked the President of the Board of Trade on what principle he decides which of several competing applicants with equal claims shall be permitted to import goods requiring a special licence?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Competing applicants with equal claims would all receive licences. Licences are issued equitably to all those who establish their title to a ration.

Captain BENN: Does the hon. Gentleman mean to say that import is restricted entirely, or that licences are granted to all applicants?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: They are based on a certain fixed ration.

Captain BENN: That is not the question.

Lieut.-Colonel A. MURRAY: Whether the claimants are equal or not?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: We decide by the amount imported in the given year for which the calculation is made.

Mr. KILEY: Can the hon. Gentleman tell the House whether the Board of Trade have considered the advisability of limiting the amount of profit which these fortunate licensees have made?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: That is all part of the main question.

Major HAYWARD: 15.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether traders who have been refused a full import licence for certain articles have been
invited to purchase the same goods from others who had been granted a licence, and thus to become middlemen dealing in articles imported by their trade rivals?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: It is possible that applicants for permission to import restricted articles who are not entitled to participate in the ration, and who have alleged that they must have the articles, may have been recommended to procure them from a ration holder.

Mr. HOLMES: 16.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, after the Inter-Allied Commission in Constantinople has sanctioned the export of goods to England, import licences are also needed; and, if so, what happens to such goods when they arrive in England if the licence is refused?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: If the goods are on the restricted list, an import licence is needed, as the permission to export, which is granted by a body in Constantinople, does not include permission to import into the United Kingdom. If the licences could not be granted in accordance with the usual practice, or within the limits of authorised rations, the goods, if imported, would have to be held under bond until the operative restriction was removed or the rations were renewed.

Mr. HOLMES: Will the hon. Gentleman give us the value of the goods at present in the London docks, and—

Mr. SPEAKER: Notice must be given of that question.

Mr. HOLMES: 17.
asked the President of the Board of Trade what is the present rule respecting the import of upper leather, which was until recently forbidden; whether he has seen the resolution passed by the committee of the Northampton Manufacturers' Association protesting against the increased cost of upper leather; and whether he is aware of the present cost of boots?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The importation of upper leather has been free of restrictions since the 15th of June.

Captain BENN: 26.
asked whether the import of any articles from France and Italy is prohibited; and what steps he is taking to encourage British exports to those countries?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: As regards France, by virtue of an international agreement, goods on the prohibited list are with few exceptions freely licensed for import into the United Kingdom. As regards Italy, with very few exceptions, the restrictions are the same as those applied to similar goods from other countries. I am satisfied that British exports to these two countries, so far from being prejudiced by the British import restrictions have been considerably assisted by the basis on which the import restrictions are administered.

Captain BENN: If the exports to Italy are encouraged by import restrictions why are the exports to America not encouraged by import restrictions?

Lieut.-Colonel MURRAY: rose—

Mr. SPEAKER: That question can be raised when it arises in Debate.

Captain BENN: 27.
asked whether there is any substantial import from America of the following articles: ladies' apparel, baskets, bulbs (flower), carpets, cloisonné ware, cotton duck, cotton embroidery, feathers for bedding, furniture, gin, granite, hops, hosiery, cotton, matches, mouldings, plants and trees, saccharine, toys, and woollen goods; and, if not, why are they included in the import restriction list?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: But for the import restrictions the answer to the first part of the question would be in the affirmative. This was a factor in the considerations which weighed with the Government in adopting the policy of import restriction.

Mr. HOUSTON: 36.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he can state in money values the total amount of our exports during the first six months of 1912, 1913, and 1914, and the total amount of our exports during the first six months of this year?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Exports from the United Kingdom during the first six months of 1912, 1913, 1914, and 1919, respectively, were as follows:


Period, January to June.
Exports of British and Irish Produce and Manufactures.
Exports of Foreign and Colonial Merchandise.
Total Exports.




£
£
£


1912
…
225,313,000
57,834,000
283,147,000


1913
…
257,056,000
59,055,000
316,111,000


1914
…
255,458,000
59,276,000
314,734,000


1919
…
334,755,000
55,435,000
390,190,000

Mr. HOUSTON: 37.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he can state in money values the total amount of our imports during the first six months of 1912, 1913, and 1914, and the total amount of our imports during the first six months of this year?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Imports into the United Kingdom during the first six months of 1912, 1913, 1914, and 1919, respectively, were as follows:


Period.

Value of Imports.


January to June,
1912
£353,900,000


 January to June,
1913
378,746,000


 January to June,
1914
375,883,000


 January to June,
1919
717,034,000

Mr. HOUSTON: Is my hon. Friend aware that, owing to the great excess of imports over exports, we are rapidly travelling along the road to ruin?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I know that the position is very serious.

Mr. WALLACE: 21.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether the import of glass bottles is prohibited; and whether, seeing that this constitutes a direct check on our exports of jam, confectionery, and many other articles, he proposes to take any action in the matter?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The answer to the first part of the question is: The import of glass bottles is restricted to one-half of the imports of 1913. While my right hon. Friend cannot agree that the suggestion in the second part of the question has substantial foundation a larger ration of glass bottles will be permitted at an early date.

Mr. WALLACE: Is the ration decided upon the money value or the total quantity as compared with pre-war years?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I am not quite sure.

Captain BENN: How can we keep up our export trade if we cannot get the bottles?

Mr. SPEAKER: It would be better if these questions were reserved. We cannot debate every question.

Lieut-Colonel MURRAY: 52.
asked the Prime Minister what is the reason for continuing the import restrictions after 1st September?

Mr. WALLACE: 53.
asked whether the import restrictions after 1st September will be the same as those at present existing; if not, on whose advice changes will be made; and whether the reason for each change, if any, will be made public?

Mr. BONAR LAW (Leader of the House): A full statement on this subject will be made before the Recess.

Captain BENN: Have the reasons for restricting imports been published?

Mr. BONAR LAW: They have been discussed in this House.

Lieut.-Colonel MURRAY: When the Government makes its statement will the House have an opportunity of saying by its vote in the Division Lobby whether it agrees with the Government policy?

Mr. BONAR LAW: In regard to this particular matter I cannot give a promise. The statement may very likely be made on the Adjournment.

Major HAYWARD: 56.
asked the Prime Minister whether the Government have taken the opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown on the question of restricting imports under the powers of Section 43 of the Customs Laws Consolidation Act of 1876?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I have been asked to reply. The answer is in the affirmative.

Captain BENN: Is the Government acting in accordance with the advice of its Law Officers?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Yes, Sir.

Captain BENN: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that except for the two Law Officers no legal opinion supports the legality of these restrictions?

IMPORTS CONSULTATIVE COUNCIL.

Captain W. BENN: 18.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether witnesses before the Imports Consultative Committee gave evidence at to the prices and sources of their supplies to those who were, or might be, their competitors in business?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: If any witness before the Imports Consultative Council gave such information to the members of
the Council he did so quite voluntarily, and doubtless with full knowledge of what he was doing.

Captain BENN: Is it the fact that the witnesses before the Committee did in fact give evidence to the members of the Committee who were their trade rivals?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: They may have done that, for all I know, but they knew who-the members were.

Captain BENN: Were they invited by the Board of Trade to give evidence?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: They, and others, were invited to give evidence, but not of necessity evidence which they considered private.

PRODUCTION (INCREASED COST).

Lieut.-Colonel MURRAY: 20.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will cause an estimate to be prepared showing the percentage increase of cost in production and distribution due to the inquiries, correspondence, and other labour incidental to compliance with the-requirements of the Board of Trade?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: No, Sir. I am afraid I cannot estimate the cost to business undertakings of answering the Board of Trade's inquiries, as among other things, I am not in a position to prophesy what questions or what number of questions will be asked by Members of this House.

Captain W. BENN: Supposing traders in the North of England desire an interview have they to come all the way to London?

Lieut.-Colonel MURRAY: Are not the inquiries infinitesimal compared with the cost?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: If the Board of Trade instituted such an inquiry, I am afraid it would only add to the evil complained of.

Lieut.-Colonel MURRAY: Will the hon. Gentleman give me a rough figure—anything, even a million?

Captain BENN: Has any trader been asked to interview twenty-two separate officials?

DEPARTMENT OF OVERSEA TRADE.

Mr. BETTERTON: 46.
asked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the interest that is being taken in questions of foreign trade and the constitution of the Department of Oversea Trade, he will publish the Report on the Department of the Subcommittee of the Treasury Committee on Staffs?

Mr. BALDWIN (Joint Financial Secretary to the Treasury): I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply which was given to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Lieut.- Colonel Pownall) on the 2nd April last.

LONG-TERM CREDITS.

Mr. GIDEON MURRAY: 50.
asked the Prime Minister whether the Government has decided to set aside £25,000,000 to provide long-term credits in foreign countries which cannot pay for essential imports by exports?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I have been asked to answer this question. I have nothing to add to the answers which have already been given to the hon. Member on this subject. This matter will be fully explained in the forthcoming statement on trade policy.

Mr. MURRAY: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether the statement in a leading newspaper a few days ago to the effect that £25,000,000 has been set aside for this purpose is correct or not?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I have not seen that paper.

LORD CAVE'S COMMITTEE (REPORT).

Mr. G. MURRAY: 51.
asked the Prime Minister when the Report of Lord Cave's Committee on the question of Government machinery for dealing with trade and commerce will be published; and whether, in view of the importance of the subject to the business community, he will take all possible steps to expedite its publication before the Recess?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I cannot give the exact date, but it will be published as soon as possible.

Mr. MURRAY: Can we take it that it will be published before the Recess?

Mr. BONAR LAW: It will be published as soon as possible.

Mr. MURRAY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware it was intended to bring this matter up on the Second Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill, but there was no opportunity? Will he give us a day or part of a day for the discussion of this question?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I am afraid I cannot promise. But it might be raised on the Third Reading of the Bill.

Mr. BILLING: Shall we have it before the announcement of the Trade Policy of the Government?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I hope it will be published before the Prime Minister makes his statement on that policy.

ESTHONIA, LITHUANIA, AND LATTVIA (RECOGNITION OF DE FACTO GOVERNMENTS).

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 54.
asked the Prime Minister whether His Majesty's Government recognise the importance for the trade of this country of the early recognition of the independence and of the de facto Governments of Esthonia, Lithuania, and Lattvia?

Colonel Sir HAMAR GREENWOOD: (Department of Oversea Trade): This is a question affecting Allied policy as a whole, and a decision could only be reached at Paris in concert with our Allies.

SUPREME ECONOMIC COUNCIL.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 57.
asked the Prime Minister what nations are now represented on the Supreme Economic Council; who are the British representatives; whether a Report of its work will be laid upon the Table of the House; if so, when and how often; and to what Votes will the expenses of the British section be charged?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: For the first, second, and last part of the question, I must refer the hon. Member to the answer given him on the 21st ultimo. The question of laying a Report of the Council's work upon the Table of the House will be considered.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: May I have an answer to the last part of the question?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I have said it arises on the Diplomatic and Consular Vote.

GREATER OUTPUT (GOVERNMENT ENCOURAGEMENT).

Mr. HOUSTON: 63.
asked the Prime Minister whether, seeing that our national existence depends upon our export trade, he will state what the Government is doing or is going to do, by propaganda or otherwise, to bring this fact home to the people of this country with a view to obtaining greater output?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I have been asked to reply. The Government fully realise the importance of increasing output in every direction, and Ministers have repeatedly emphasised the necessity for this. The Government would welcome any help from hon. Members in bringing the urgency of the matter home to their constituents.

Mr. HOUSTON: But what are the Government going to do? My hon. Friend has not answered my question.

Mr. MacVEAGH: Wait and see !

TOMATOES.

Mr. R. GWYNNE: 76.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether his attention has been called to the fact that, owing to the dumping of tomatoes from Holland, the price of our home growers has been reduced from 10s. and 12s. 6d. perdozea pounds to 6s. and 7s., and that, owing to the increased agricultural wages, the cost of production amounts to about Vs. per dozen pounds, which leaves no profit for the grower; whether market gardeners will be compelled to largely reduce their staff if this competition continues; and what steps he proposes to take to prevent the decrease in home production of "tomatoes which will follow?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Sir Arthur Boscawen): The Board are watching carefully the effect of foreign imports on the prices of home-grown vegetables, and have no evidence to show that there is any decrease in the production of tomatoes due to imports from Holland. The interests of market gardeners will be borne in mind when the Government's general trade policy is developed.

Captain W. BENN: Is it part of the Government's policy to restrict imports of food into this country?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: I did not say so.

Mr. GWYNNE: In view of the fact that tomatoes are being restricted from Spain, will the hon. Gentleman see that the restriction is applied to Holland?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: The whole question is being considered in relation to the general trade policy of the country.

Captain BENN: Are tomatoes from Spain restricted in import?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: Perhaps the hon. and gallant Gentleman will give me notice of that question.

Mr. BILLING: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, unless some steps are taken in this matter, thousands of men will be thrown out of work; and will he give some consideration to the employment of men in this country?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: I have already said that the matter is under the observation of the Board, and that the whole matter is being considered in connection with the general trade policy of the country.

Oral Answers to Questions — STOKE-ON-TRENT CORPORATION (GAS COAL).

Mr. SEDDON: 6.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the Stoke-on-Trent Corporation Gasworks are being compelled to purchase Durham coal, entailing extra strain upon railway transit and at a cost of 8s. per ton more than they were paying for local coal, and, in addition to this extra cost, there is a very high percentage of ash, causing difficulties in clearing the producers, dissatisfaction among coke purchasers and gas consumers, and that the ammonia cal liquor produced from Durham coal is. 10 gallons per ton less than is produced from local coal, causing in all an approximate loss of 14s. per ton upon Durham coal; and whether he proposes to take any action in the matter?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Since the coal produced in Staffordshire and other Midland areas is insufficient to meet the demands for local consumption it has been necessary to bring coal from Durham to meet the deficiency. As far as practicable the supplies of Durham coal have been equally distributed among the undertakings concerned, and under present circumstances it would not be possible to allow the Stoke-
on-Trent Corporation gasworks to have more North Staffordshire coal unless it were diverted from other undertakings.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there is coal to meet supply in the North Staffordshire area, and why should not the corporation be allowed the opportunity of buying coal near to their own door?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I shall be glad if the hon. and gallant Gentleman can give any useful information on this matter to the Board of Trade or to the Coal Controller.

Oral Answers to Questions — GERMANY (TRADE UNIONS).

Mr. G. BALFOUR: 7.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether the centralised trade unions of Germany have instructed their members to work eleven hours per day at pre-war rates of pay?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of LABOUR (Mr. Wardle): I have been asked to reply to this question. No confirmation of the report implied in my hon. Friend's question has so far been discovered by my Department in the German Press, although they do indicate that the responsible leaders of organised labour in Germany are most active in inculcating intensive work as the only means of restoring Germany's economic vitality.

Oral Answers to Questions — DISTRICT RAILWAY COMPANY (SOUTH KENSINGTON SUBWAY).

Sir PHILIP MAGNUS: 10.
asked the President of the Board of Trade if he has any information as to the intentions of the District Railway Company to re-open for passengers the subway between the South Kensington railway station and the district post office; and whether he can state the conditions under which facilities for constructing that subway were obtained?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I am making inquiries on this matter and will let the hon. Baronet know the result. I do not think the subway was constructed originally in order to give access to the district post office.

Sir P. MAGNUS: Can the hon. Gentleman induce the President of the Board of Trade to bring some pressure
to bear upon the railway company tore-open this subway, the closing of which at present is causing great inconvenience not to the district post office, but to the University of London and to the Imperial Institute?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Yes, Sir; all these things are questions of expense, and they have to be very carefully considered.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOUSING.

CEMENT PRICES (SCOTLAND).

Captain W. BENN: 19.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he-is aware of the difficulty that has arisen with regard to building on small holdings-in Scotland and of the fact that cement shows a 100 per cent. rise in price and other building materials similar or greater increases; and whether he will now permit the free import of cement and other building materials?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I am informed by the Secretary for Scotland that the facts as to prices of materials given in the hon. and gallant Member's question appear to be correct. With reference to the latter part of the question, the maintenance or modification of the restrictions is under consideration.

Captain BENN: Is the Board of Trade-preventing the import of cement which is urgently needed for small holdings in. Scotland?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: That is under consideration.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Is not cement being prevented from coming to this country in the interests of the shareholders in cement companies?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: As a matter of fact the increase in price is not greater in regard to this article than in regard to other materials.

Mr. HOLMES: Would it not be lower if more were allowed to come in free?

Major PRESCOTT: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that cement has gone up 3s. per ton during the last three days?

Mr. G. BALFOUR: Is he aware that such a policy would put people out of employment in the cement works of this country?

Oral Answers to Questions — MERCANTILE MARINE.

COMPENSATION TO SEAMEN.

Mr. CROOKS: 22.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware of the large number of seamen whose experiences during the War have shattered their nerves and have rendered them incapable of further work; and whether any steps are being taken to come to the financial assistance of these men and their dependants?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Compensation has been granted under the war risks compensation scheme for the Mercantile Marine in a number of cases similar to those referred to in the question. If the right hon. Gentleman has any special case or cases in mind and will send me particulars, I will inquire into them.

Oral Answers to Questions — RAILWAY ADMINISTRATION.

RE-OPENING OF STATIONS.

Mr. GILBERT: 23.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether any decision has yet been come to by the Railway Executive Committee as to re-opening the stations on and working the Victoria to City line on the South-Eastern and Chatham Railway?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I understand that it has not been found practicable to re-open the closed stations on this line, but I am making further inquiries on the matter.

Mr. ATKEY: 32.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has now seen the letter from the Nottingham Chamber of Commerce and the Town Clerk of Nottingham upon the subject of the inconvenience caused to the travelling public of Nottingham by the closure of the entrance to the Midland Station opposite Trent Street; whether he is aware that a petition was sent to the Midland Railway Company on 24th February, 191V, signed by over 1,000 season-ticket holders and endorsed by many citizens testifying to the inconvenience caused by the closure of this entrance; and whether, in view of the inconvenience caused by the existing state of affairs, he will make such representations to the Railway Executive Committee as will at once meet the demand for the re-opening of the entrance in question?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The letter to which I understand the hon. Gentleman refers has been brought to the notice of the Chief Inspecting Officer of Railways, who, as stated in the reply given on the subject on the 4th August, will visit the station as soon as his duties permit. Until his report has been received and considered, my right hon. Friend does not propose to take any further action in the matter.

Mr. ATKEY: Will my hon. Friend please give some approximate date when this inspector will go down, and will he bear in mind that every day, during the interval, there are thousands of people suffering a very keen sense of irritation?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I think I can rely on the hon. Member keeping the matter before me.

Mr. ATKEY: I will put a further question next week.

GOODS RATES.

Mr. GILBERT: 24.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether passenger fares or goods rates on railways have been increased since 1914 in France, Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland; and, if so, can he state what the increases have been and from what dates they have been put in force?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I have not full information on these matters, but I am sending the hon. Gentleman a copy of the "Board of Trade Journal" for the 7th November last, which contains, on pages 577–8, some information regarding recent increases in railway charges abroad.

Mr. GILBERT: 25.
asked the President of the Board of Trade from what date passenger train goods rates have been increased in this country; what the percentage of increase has been on pre-war rates; what is the estimated increased receipts expected from the advances during this year; and will he state if these increases were recommended by the Railway Executive Committee, or by what authority the various railway companies made these increased charges?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: A revised scale of charges for the conveyance of parcels by passenger train was introduced on the 1st November last on the recommendation of the Railway Executive Committee, and with the concurrence of the Board of Tirade. The revision was made primarily with the view of maintaining the relation-
ship between the charges made by the Post Office and those made by the Railway Companies for the conveyance of parcels. Under this scale the charges are in most cases higher than the charges in force before the War, but there is no uniform percentage increase, and I cannot give an estimate of the increased railway revenue likely to be obtained.

SEASON TICKETS (HOLIDAY EXTENSIONS).

Mr. GILBERT: 33.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that it has been the practice for years that season-ticket holders on railways were allowed to deposit their tickets during holidays when they were not used, and were allowed an extension or rebate for such periods of time; whether any order has been issued by the Railway Executive Committee, or by the railway companies, cancelling this practice during the year; and whether, in view of the increased price of season tickets, he will give instructions that the old practice be continued?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I am asking for the observations of the Railway Executive Committee on this matter, and I will communicate with the hon. Gentleman on their receipt.

Oral Answers to Questions — COAL SUPPLIES.

WASHING AT COLLIERIES.

Mr. DENNIS HERBERT: 28.
asked whether the sum of 1s. per ton is all that is allowed to be added to the price of coal for washing; and whether the effect of this is to reduce the amount of coal-washing now done?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The price of coal washed at collieries is controlled by the Price of Coal (Limitation) Act, and must not exceed by more than the standard amount the price of the same fuel sold in similar quantities and under similar conditions affecting the sale on or about the same date in the twelve months ended the 30th June, 1914.
In the case of coal dealt with at washeries not operated as part of colliery undertakings each case is dealt with on its merits, and a charge approved which is regarded as sufficient to meet increased costs of washing and to encourage such washing to continue.

SLACK.

Mr. HERBERT: 29.
asked the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware that the addition of the same increases in price to all classes of coal, which has raised the cost of fine slack from about 6d. or 1s. per ton to about 19s. per ton, is having the effect of stopping the sales of fine slack and thus increasing the consumption of better classes of coal; and whether, seeing that much use has been made of coal wagons to remove slack which is now unsaleable on to dumps, in order to remedy this he will reduce the price of slack?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave to a question put by the hon. Member for Woolwich on the 7th instant. I may add that it is not the fact that difficulty is being experienced at the present time in disposing of slacks.

Mr. HERBERT: Is it not a fact that there is a vast amount of slack at present dumped outside the collieries as unsaleable?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: That is not my information, but I will make inquiries.

Mr. PEMBERTON BILLING: Is it not a fact that slack is being delivered as the best house coal, and will the hon. Gentleman see that this is stopped?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: If the hon. Member will give me any information in his possession I will inquire.

OUTPUT.

Major GLYN: 31.
asked what is the present weekly output of coal of the various coalfields in the United Kingdom at the present date in comparison with the weekly output of last June; what are the approximate figures of the weekly consumption of coal for the same period in the country; and what are the approximate figures of coal exported from British ports also for those periods?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The last week for which particulars of output are available is that ended 26th July,1919, during which the estimated output of coal in Great Britain was 2,537,954 tons, the figure for the corresponding week in June being 4,806,933 tons. Apart from the effect of the reduction in miners' hours which took place on the 16th July the output during the week ended the 26th July was
abnormally reduced through strikes and holidays. In reply to the second part of the question, no records are available of the weekly consumption of coal. As regards exports, the figures are only compiled monthly and the full effect of the reduction in output in July will only be reflected in the August figures.

Oral Answers to Questions — HAY.

Major ENTWISTLE: 30.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware of the alarm with which the horse transport industry views the prospect of a probable shortage of hay during the coming winter; and whether the Government propose to continue the rationing and the distribution scheme to ensure the continuity of the industry and to distribute a fair proportion of the present stocks of the Government for civil purposes?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I am aware of the apprehensions referred to. The Government is not yet satisfied that there is adequate foundation for them

Oral Answers to Questions — PORT OF HULL (SHIPMENTS OF COPRA, ETC.).

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 34.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that large quantities of oil seeds, copra, and kernels are still being landed at London and Liverpool and conveyed by rail to Hull, Where they are crushed; and whether, in view of the congestion of the ports of London and Liverpool and the shortage of rolling stock, he is taking any steps to divert a proportion of these cargoes direct to Hull?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of SHIPPING (Colonel Leslie Wilson): I have been asked to reply. I have no knowledge of the extent to which oil seeds, etc., are being conveyed by rail to Hull, but the practice will apply to parcels discharged out of liners carrying the majority of their cargo to London and not to whole cargoes. In these circumstances, diversion of the steamers to Hull is impracticable. It must not be forgotten that London is one of the most important markets of the world for the disposal of produce shipped to this
country both sold and unsold, and the preservation of this market is of great national importance. Steps are being taken which it is hoped will reduce the demands which the carriage of this traffic makes on the railway facilities of the country.

Lieut-Commander KENWORTHY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that over 4,000 tons have been carried by rail since the Armistice, and would it not be possible for some of this to be sent by coastwise traffic, and so relieve the railways?

Colonel WILSON: That is the intention of the new arrangement. We are endeavouring to have the coastwise traffic used more fully and frequently than in the past.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that there was a direct import of copra into Hull before the War and that it has now been killed?

Colonel WILSON: Yes, that is so; but it has nothing to do with the Ministry of Shipping. If they were whole cargoes, they would still come in, but they were part cargoes which came to London and Liverpool and then went to Hull.

Colonel YATE: Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman do something to improve the canal traffic between those two places?

Colonel WILSON: I am afraid that does not arise out of the question.

Major ENTWISTLE: 35.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, in the case of copra exported from Australia to Hull, the Commonwealth steamers are not able to bring shipments of copra though they have regular monthly sailings direct to Hull; whether this is due to the Conference line arrangements and freight rebate system, which are interfering with the natural flow of cargoes to Hull, and result in the congestion of London and Liverpool and wastage of land transport; and what steps the Government propose to take in the matter?

Colonel WILSON: I have been asked to reply. I have no information that any steamers sailing from Australia to Hull are unable to bring copra to that port. If my hon. and gallant Friend will furnish me with particulars, I will cause inquiry to be made into the matter.

Major ENTWISTLE: Could we have this freight rebate system, which is the cause
of steamers being unable to go to Hull, removed, at any rate, so far as the Commonwealth steamers are concerned?

Colonel WILSON: If my hon. and gallant Friend will give me any particulars of any cases in which copra has not been allowed to go to Hull because of this or any other reason, I will have inquiry made.

Oral Answers to Questions — FORCES OF INDIA (AEROPLANES).

Captain R. TERRELL: 39.
asked the Secretary of State for India whether the supply of aeroplanes on the North-West Frontier has been adequate; and whether there has been any adverse criticisms of the types of machines employed?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for AIR (Major-General Seely): Owing to transport difficulties, there has been delay in supplying the forces of India with the required number of machines of suitable types. These deficiencies will have been remedied at a very early date.

Mr. BILLING: Was the officer responsible for selecting these types of machine an officer experienced in aviation in India, and is the right hon. Gentleman aware that machines which will fly in this country will not fly in India?

Major-General SEELY: The officers concerned had full knowledge of that fact. It is a fact that suitable machines could not be got to India in time owing to extraordinary difficulties of transport, but that is being remedied.

Captain TERRELL: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the last part of the question, and say whether there has been any adverse criticisms on the types of machines employed?

Major-General SEELY: Yes, from here and from there. We did not get the right type of machine for the purpose, but that is being remedied. We could not get them there owing to the shortage of ships.

Oral Answers to Questions — FINLAND.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 45.
asked the Prime Minister whether any representations have been made by the Finnish Government for a loan; and, if so, whether His Majesty's Government will bear in
mind, before considering any such proposition, the continued imprisonment in that country of the surviving Red prisoners, including a large number of Socialist Members of Parliaments?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: As regards the first part of the question, His Majesty's Government were requested last June to grant facilities for the raising of a loan by the Finnish Government through private firms in this country, and a reply was made to the effect that no difficulties would be placed in the way of raising the loan in question. The second part of the question does not, therefore, arise.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Will the Government consider the inadvisability of making such loans or credits to the Finnish Government so long as these men are kept in prison under the circumstances recently disclosed?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I have answered the question put down upon the Paper, and I do not like to go any further.

Mr. RAPER: Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that it is not only in the interests of Finland, but also of this country to take any steps that may be considered desirable to prevent a recurrence of this affair?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: Every step is being taken that can be taken by this Government.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF SUPPLY.

Lieut.-Colonel MURRAY: 47.
asked the Prime Minister whether it is the intention of His Majesty's Government to introduce legislation for the purpose of setting up a Ministry of Supply?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I am not in a position to make any statement.

Lieut.-Colonel MURRAY: Before the right hon. Gentleman makes up his mind to introduce legislation setting up a Ministry of Supply, will he take the opinion of the House as to whether it is desirable or not?

Mr. BONAR LAW: We have come to no decision and I am sure that my hon. and gallant Friend will understand the difficulty of coming to a decision. There would be no use in setting up a Ministry
of Supply unless it were to be a Ministry of Supply for all the Government Departments. The subject is under consideration and the views of the House will be kept in mind.

Major LLOYD-GREAME: In the mean time, is it not a fact that a Minister is being referred to by his colleagues as "The Minister of Supply"?

Mr. BONAR LAW: It is a question of phraseology; I should not use it myself.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Is not the chief difficulty the vested interest of the Minister concerned?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I am sure my hon. and gallant Friend will realise that so long as there are immense stores to be sold the Ministry of Munitions, in some form or other, must be kept up.

Oral Answers to Questions — GERMAN PRISONERS OF WAR.

Lieut.- Commander KENWORTHY: 48.
asked the Prime Minister what steps are being taken to repatriate the German prisoners of war in this country now that the German Government has ratified the Peace Treaty; and whether he is aware that numbers of these men are still employed on the land in this country, thereby keeping British subjects out of employment?

Mr. BONAR LAW: These prisoners will be repatriated as speedily as possible after the ratification of the Peace Treaty, but this is a matter which, under the Peace Treaty, must be dealt with jointly with our Allies. As regards the last part of the question, I have no knowledge of any case where a British subject is being kept out of employment by a German prisoner. I am informed that the need for men on the land is very great, and if any man wanting work on a farm will communicate with the Board of Agriculture. that Department will take immediate steps to find him employment.

Lieut.- Commander KENWORTHY: What is meant exactly by "ratifying" the Peace Treaty? I understand that this country and Germany have ratified it. Are we to wait until the whole of the twenty-three Allies have ratified it before thesis men can go back?

Mr. BONAR LAW: That has been explained more than once. It becomes ratified as soon as it receives the ratification of three Powers.

Mr. BILLING: In the event of a British labourer applying for work on a farm where Germans are at present employed, will the German prisoners be dismissed to give him an opportunity of finding work?

Mr. BONAR LAW: That difficulty does not arise, because, I am informed, there is more work for agricultural labourers than there are labourers to do it.

Colonel YATE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the farmers say that if the German prisoners are removed they do not know what they will do?

Oral Answers to Questions — SEX DISQUALIFICATION (REMOVAL) BILL.

Major: 49.
HILLS asked the Prime Minister whether it is intended to pass the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Bill before the Recess?

Mr. BONAR LAW: It is hoped that time will be found for this Bill before the Recess.

Oral Answers to Questions — BELA KUN.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 55.
asked the Prime Minister whether the Entente have demanded or intend to demand from German-Austria the surrender of Bela Kun; and, if so, why?

Mr. BONAR LAW: This question has not been considered by the Council of Five.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: May I take it from that that the Council of Five will not attempt to extradite members of the late Soviet Government in Hungary who have committed no crimes against humanity?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I hope the hon. Member will not ask me to say more than I have—that the matter is not under consideration at present.

Oral Answers to Questions — WORLD'S FOOD SUPPLIES.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 58.
asked the Prime Minister what steps are now being taken to control the world supplies of food and raw material; whether the Allied and neutral nations are still being rationed; and whether any steps are being taken by the Concert of Allies or by the League of Nations to control the prices of food and raw materials?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: The control of food and raw materials is exercised generally under the supervision of the Supreme Economic Council, but it is now proposed to create an international economic council to consult on economic matters and to advise the various Governments concerned pending the organisation of the League of Nations. The answer to the second part of the question is in the negative. The question whether the control of prices is possible or desirable will no doubt be considered by the international economic council when formed.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Are the Government fully alive to the great importance and urgency of this matter, and can he assure me that his Department is alive and taking steps?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I can assure my hon. and gallant Friend that both the Government and my Department are fully alive.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL EXPENDITURE.

Mr. BETTERTON: 59.
asked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the serious situation of the national finances, as disclosed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the urgent need of economy in all Departments of administration, he will, in order to allay public anxiety, lay upon the Table of the House before the Recess definite proposals for the reduction of the national expenditure?

Mr. BONAR LAW: It is impossible to say more on this subject than has been said by the Prime Minister and the Chan-cellar of the Exchequer.

Sir D. MACLEAN: In view of the fact that my right hon. Friend promised to lay the Army Estimates anew after the Recess will he also, in view of the declared policy of the Government with regard to the reduction of expenditure, lay the Civil Service Estimates afresh?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I will consider that, I cannot give a promise now.

Mr. HOUSTON: 62.
asked the Prime Minister whether he is aware that our average national expenditure since the beginning of April has been £4,420,000 per day; and can he state what our average national revenue has been per day for the same period?

Mr. BALDWIN: The total revenue paid into the Exchequer in the period ending
26th July was £268,095,165, which would represent a daily average of £2,291,000. In view of the fact that a much larger proportion of the annual revenue comes in in the last quarter of the financial year than in the earlier quarters, any direct comparison of daily averages of expenditure and revenue over a part of the year only is bound to be misleading.

Mr. HOUSTON: May I ask the Leader of the House whether, notwithstanding the explanations of my right hon. Friend of the enormous disparity between expenditure and income, and his promise that immediate steps will be taken to make the most drastic reductions in every Government Department, we are rapidly heading for ruin?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I am not quite sure about the rapidity with which we are heading for ruin, but quite as fully as my hon. Friend the Government realise the seriousness of the position, and promises have already been made both by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer that expenditure will be radically cut down.

Mr. BILLING: Will nationalisation of industry increase or decrease the national expenditure?

Mr. BONAR LAW: That question will arise when we propose to carry out that policy.

Oral Answers to Questions — UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE.

Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSON: 61.
asked the Prime Minister if it is proposed to extend the scheme of unemployment insurance to all persons who are insured under the National Health Insurance Acts; and, if so. whether the changes contemplated involve the disappearance of separate cards for health and unemployment insurance contributions, and the extension of the work of approved societies to unemployment insurance administration?

Mr. WARDLE: I have been asked to reply to this question. In accordance with the recommendation of the National Industrial Conference, the Government are considering an extended scheme of unemployment insurance. The matter is not yet ripe for the announcement of details, but I may mention that the question of a joint book and stamp for both health and unemployment insurance contributions is
under consideration. It is not proposed to extend the work of approved societies to unemployment insurance.

Oral Answers to Questions — NAVY, ARMY, AND AIR FORCE ESTIMATES.

Sir FREDERICK BANBURY: 65.
asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will say why no Estimates for the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force have yet been presented; when they will be presented; and if an opportunity will be given for discussing them in Committee of Supply?

Mr. BALDWIN: Estimates have not yet been presented for the Navy, Army, and Air Force, because, owing to the course of events, it has not been possible for His Majesty's Government to determine the principal factors on which such Estimates must be based—for example, the strength of the forces to be maintained in the second half of the financial year—in time-for presentation of Estimates before the Recess. Every endeavour will be made to lay the Estimates before the Houses during the autumn, and the usual opportunities will be afforded for their discussion.

Sir F. BANBURY: Will not most of the money have been expended before the Estimates are presented to the House, and, if so, what steps will be taken to recover the money already spent should the House decline to sanction the expenditure? Will it be the same as in the case of the Lord Chancellor's bath; will a Supplementary Estimate be presented for money spent in defiance of the House?

Mr. BALDWIN: No. We may assume that the Lord Chancellor's bath was a unique event. Sufficient sums have been voted to carry on the Services until the Estimates are presented to the House.

Oral Answers to Questions — SANTO DOMINGO.

Major CHRISTOPHER LOWTHER: 68.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that the United States Military Governor of the Republic of Santo Domingo combines for the time being the functions both of President and Congress of that Republic; and whether His Majesty's Government will
make representations to the United States Government to allow the Republic of Santo Domingo to again manage its own affairs under the protection of the League of Nations?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: His Majesty's Government are quite aware that the United States Military Governor is in effective control of the administration of Santo Domingo. His Majesty's Chargé d' Affaires reports that United States intervention was the only means of rescuing the Republic from chaos, and he believes that it is welcome to the better elements of the country. The answer to the last part of the question is that the matter appears to be one which concerns the inhabitants of Santo Domingo rather than His Majesty's Government.

Oral Answers to Questions — FOOD SUPPLIES.

ALLOTMENTS, WANSTEAD FLATS.

Sir ERNEST WILD: 77.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether the allotment-holders on the Wanstead Flats have received notice to quit by 31st January, 1920; whether thereby grave hardships will be inflicted upon a deserving class of the community, many of whom are discharged and demobilised soldiers, and, moreover, the supply of food will be diminished; and whether he will use his good offices with the Epping Forest Commissioners to induce them to withdraw the notice to quit and allow the plots to be retained by the allotment-holders until the end of the year 1921?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: Since Lord Ernie received the deputation of which my hon. and learned Friend was a member, the Board have addressed to the City Corporation representations with regard to the desirability of extending the tenure of the allotments in question, to which they have as yet received no reply.

Lieut-Colonel MALONE: Cannot this matter be hastened, seeing that it has been outstanding several months?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: We cannot do more than write letters to the people who have it in hand. If they do not answer very shortly, we shall write again.

Oral Answers to Questions — DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR SERVICE.

Major C. LOWTHER: 69.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs why the diplomatic representative of Great Britain resident in the Republic of Salvador holds only the rank of Consul while the British representative in Honduras holds the rank of Acting Consul-General; and if, in view of the fact that Great Britain does at least as much trade with Salvador as with Honduras, he will give the same rank to both Consular officers?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: One member of His Majesty's Diplomatic Service is accredited to Guatemala, Honduras, and Salvador. He represents His Majesty the King in each of these countries as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. Ho is also His Majesty's Consul-General for each of these countries.

Rear-Admiral ADAIR: 70.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs why our Ambassador to Brazil has not yet taken up his post, seeing that he was appointed nearly a year ago; and whether the Government are quite satisfied that he is a suitable person for this position having regard to its importance in respect of our trade?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: The departure of His Majesty's Ambassador was at first deferred because his services were required for preliminary work connected with the Peace Conference and subsequently because there was a question of his employment on a special mission decided upon at the Conference. He is now leaving for his post very shortly. The answer to the last part of the question is in the affirmative.

Rear-Admiral ADAIR: 71.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs who is now our Minister in Argentina; and whether the Government are quite satisfied that he is a suitable person for this position having regard to its importance in respect of our trade?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: Our present Minister in Buenos Ayres is Sir Reginald Tower, who has held this post since 1911. We have every reason to be satisfied with the manner in which he has discharged the onerous duties incumbent on this position.

Oral Answers to Questions — POLAND (ANTI-SEMITIC DISORDERS).

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 72.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the British Minister at Warsaw stated publicly that he had aided the Poles by disclosing the truth concerning the affair of the anti-Semitic disorders; and if he will explain in what this truth consists in order to dispel any impression that may arise that the British Minister in Warsaw has not conducted his investigation with complete impartiality?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: The exact words reported to have been used by His Majesty's Minister were, "We have recently helped the Polish Government in explaining the truth concerning the alleged anti-Semitic excesses, the news about which produced with us the worst impression." I do not consider that these words are calculated to produce an impression of the nature indicated by the hon. and gallant Member.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Is my hon. Friend aware that three Jewish newspapers in Warsaw, on account of reflecting upon the impartiality of the British Minister, have been completely suppressed; and will he send out an independent inquiry so that we may know the truth about these alleged atrocities on the Jews?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I cannot promise to send out any further inquiry as my hon. and gallant Friend suggests. I know nothing of the suppression of newspapers.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Would my hon. Friend make inquiries about the suppression of these newspapers simply because they printed a protest against the British Minister's action?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I shall make the inquiry my hon. and gallant Friend desires.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir S. HOARE: Is there not an Inter-Allied inquiry making such an inquiry in Poland at this moment?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: That is so.

Oral Answers to Questions — RUSSIA.

JEWS.

Mr. RAPER: 73.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the percentage of Jews in Central Russia
is estimated to be only 2 per cent. of the total population, which is mainly Christian; and whether he has any information to the effect that the various departments of the Bolshevist Government, which claims to be the national Government of Russia, are mainly controlled by Jews?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: The most recent statistics I have seen give the percentage of Jews in European Russia as 4 per cent. of the total population. The answer to the last portion of the hon. Member's question is in the affirmative.

Mr. RAPER: Is my hon. Friend aware that a considerable amount of prejudice is being excited in this country on account of the statement that the Bolshevik movement is headed by Jews, and would it not be better to take measures to enlighten the country as to the real character of these Bolshevik Jews?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I would ask my hon. Friend to accept the answer I have given, which covers this question.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Would not the best way be to prevent my hon. Friend from asking questions designed to create prejudice against the Jews?

Oral Answers to Questions — AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE (GENERAL PERSHING'S DISPATCH).

Mr. A. SHAW: 74.
asked the Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will arrange for the publication, in a form accessible to Members of this House, of the dispatch written by General Pershing to the United States Secretary of War recounting the achievements of the American Expeditionary Force?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I will carefully consider my hon. Friend's suggestion. He is, no doubt, aware that the issue as a White Paper of a foreign military dispatch would establish a precedent.

Oral Answers to Questions — MUNITIONS.

NATIONAL SMELTING COMMITTEE, LIMITED.

Mr. HOLMES: 80.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Munitions whether the National Smelting Company, Limited, has resumed building
installation operations at Avon mouth; if so, what is the nature of the arrangement which the Government has entered into with that company, or with other parties, to induce such resumption as the result of consideration of the whole position and consultation with experts; and whether the Board of Trade proposes to carry out the recommendations of the Post-War Sulphuric Acid Company, which recommendations were endorsed by the Government representatives serving thereon?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I have been asked to answer this question. The arrangements made between His Majesty's Government and the National Smelting Company in 1917 have not so far been modified in any respect. The whole question of the future of the spelter industry in this country is receiving very careful consideration, but my right hon. Friend is not at present able to announce any decision on the matter.

ARMOUR-PIERCING BULLET.

Lieut-Colonel THORNE: 78.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Munitions whether he is aware that Mr. H. J. Butler, residing at 63, Jefferson Road, Upton Park, E. 13, was the inventor of an armour-piercing incendiary bullet; if he is aware that the Government made very good use of the said bullet without in any way compensating the man in question for his invention; if he is aware that Mr. Butler worked at the Arsenal and made bullets from his own invention; and if he can state whether the Government are prepared to recognise the valuable services rendered by Mr. Butler by inventing the armour-piercing incendiary bullet?

Mr. KELLAWAY: I should be glad if the hon. and gallant Member would furnish me with further details, as I have been unable to trace the invention referred to in the question.

EXPERIMENTAL STATION, INVER-COURT.

Mr. ANEURIN WILLIAMS: 79.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Munitions whether the Inver-Court Experimental Station of the inventions branch of the Ministry is still being carried on, and, if so, for what purpose; whether experiments are being made there in converting munitions into articles which would have a sale in peace time; whether any success has been achieved in
these experiments; what other work, if any, is being carried on there; what the present expense per week is; and what has been the total expenditure on this experimental station since the signing of the Armistice?

Mr. KELLAWAY: The Inver Court Experimental Station is temporarily being carried on for experimental work in the improvement of artificial limbs. The depot is also conducting important experiments in connection with the utilisation of surplus war material for articles of a peace-time value, particularly the adaptation of aero engines as stationary engines. Considerable progress has been made in the investigation of the possible uses of internal combustion engines designed for war purposes (such as aero engines, tank engines) as stationary engines for commercial purposes with various fuels—for example, coal gas, producer gas, etc. —and should result inconsiderably enhanced prices being obtained in many cases.
The present expenditure per week on this experimental station is approximately £460. The total expenditure on the station since the Armistice has been £16,500. I may add that three months' notice to terminate the lease under which the ground is held was given over a month ago.

Mr. WILLIAMS: Is there any prospect of the station yielding more profit than its cost?

Mr. KELLAWAY: Oh, very considerably. It must be quite obvious that if we find a commercial use for war engines it will yield considerably more.

GRETNA GREEN FACTORY.

Mr. ROSE: 81.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Munitions the cost to the State of the residential buildings, hutments, and amenities erected in connection with the Gretna Green explosives factory; and the average number of persons employed from September, 1916, to the end of September, 1918?

Mr. KELLAWAY: The answer to the first part of the question is £1,237,000, and to the second 18,117, including those employed on construction, taking the period of December, 1916, to September,
1918. This figure was included in the sum of £9,184,000 which I gave to the hon. Member on 7th August last.

Mr. BILLING: How many are employed at the factory at present?

Mr. KELLAWAY: I would not give the definite figure, but it is round about 3,000.

Mr. ROSE: 82.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Munitions whether the site of the Gretna Green factory was acquired by purchase or on terms of rentals; and the cost of the site of the factory, railways, and roadways, and all land occupied by the State in connection with the undertaking?

Mr. KELLAWAY: The site of the Gretna Green factory was taken over under the Defence of the Realm Act. Terms have been agreed in respect of five-sixths of the area, comprising some 7,700 acres, for £189,000. Until terms have been Settled for the remaining one-sixth of the area now under negotiation I cannot definitely reply to the last part of the question.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: For what is the factory now used?

Mr. KELLAWAY: It is at present engaged in producing a certain amount of cordite, which will be used for Army requirements.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Russia!

Oral Answers to Questions — NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.

INVALIDED STOKER.

Sir A. SHIRLEY BENN: 87.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty what pension is awarded to a leading stoker who was invalided for bad eyesight in May, 1917, after nearly twenty years' service in the Royal Navy, who was stated in his certificate of service in May, 1917, to be very good as regards character and superior as regards ability; and whether the pension is a reasonable one for a man who has served nearly twenty years and claims to have a family of four besides himself to keep?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of PENSIONS (Sir James Craig): The amount of pension allowable depends upon the circumstances of invaliding and the nature of the
particular case. The leading stoker in question, not having served for twenty-two years, is ineligible for a long-service pension. If invalided for disablement attributable to or aggravated by the Service. he would be awarded a pension at the rate applicable to his disablement, with allowances for children and the additions appropriate in his particular case, including an addition of 3s. a week for length of service

Sir A. BENN: My question did not say the man was invalided because of injury to his eyes through service, but said he was invalided. 1s 5s. 6d. a week sufficient pension for a man of forty-two?

Sir J. CRAIG: My hon. Friend's first, question was a hypothetical one. I can assure him, if he sends me a definite case to deal with, I shall be only too glad to find out what the actual facts are.

Oral Answers to Questions — DEMOBILISATION.

PRIORITY OF RELEASE.

Major O'NEILL: (by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for War if he can now make a statement as to the demobilisation of Irish voluntarily-enlisted soldiers?

Captain GUEST (Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury): It is proposed to grant a certain priority of demobilisation to those men, including Irishmen, who enlisted voluntarily and joined the Colours subsequent to 31st December, and the conditions will be promulgated in due course. It is probable that the first class to be granted such priority will consist of those who enlisted and joined between 1st January and 30th June, but it is not possible to give further details at present.

Mr. MacVEAGH: Will these instructions be issued to all commanding officers immediately?

Captain GUEST: As, soon as the details are complete they will be issued.

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS.

Mr. INSKIP: (by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for War whether it is a fact that the Non-Combatant Corps still contains a number of conscientious objectors, and whether, in view of the statement by the Home Secretary that
there are no conscientious objectors in prison or under control, directions can now be given for the immediate discharge of all such persons from the Non-Combatant Corps?

Captain GUEST: There is a difference between the question as sent to me and as read by the hon. Member—" that there are no conscientious objectors under control, the Secretary of State will give directions for their immediate discharge?' I should be glad if my hon. and learned Friend would kindly postpone this question as my right hon. Friend has not been able to prepare a reply in the time available.

Mr. INSKIP: Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that the Home Secretary stated that there were no conscientious objectors under control, and will he consider that the men in the Non-Combatant Corps accepted their duty to the State instead of rebelling and going to prison?

Captain GUEST: I do not think I can deal with any question other than that put to us at the War Office.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Is the Non-Combatant Corps earning its keep at present, and would it not be an economy to disband it?

Mr. SPEAKER: That does not arise out of the question at all.

Oral Answers to Questions — DETAINED LITHUANIANS, GLASGOW.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 83.
asked the Secretary for Scotland if he is aware that three Lithuanians are still in prison in Glasgow, although their sentence has long since expired; why they are kept in prison; and when it is proposed to release them?

The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Shortt): My right hon. Friend has asked me to reply to this question. The persons referred to by the hon. and gallant Member were convicted for offences under the Public Meeting Act, 1908, and were recommended for expulsion; they have been detained under the powers of the Aliens Act, 1905, as it has not hitherto been possible to arrange passages to Russia. In all the circum-
stances, I have given directions that if adequate sureties for their good behaviour can be found they shall be released.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that these are not Russians but Lithuanians, with which country we are on friendly terms, and why should there be any difficulty in deporting them?

Mr. SHORTT: Because the Court that convicted them so recommended.

Oral Answers to Questions — DEMOBILISED MEN (RE-EMPLOYMENT).

Captain TERRELL: 94.
asked the Minister of Labour if he will give detailed information as to how he carries out the task of constantly drawing the attention of employers to their obligations to prewar employés now demobilised who were originally promised re-employment on their return; and whether he confined himself to general appeals or admonitions or whether he is ready to bring either directly or through the local employment committees, to the notice of specific employers special cases in which there maybe ground of complaint?

Mr. WARDLE: When specific cases are brought to my notice of failures on the part of employers to fulfil their obligations, the attention of the appropriate local employment committee is drawn to the matter, who then take it up with the employer. I should, however, like to say that, so far as I am aware, employers are, as a rule, loyally carrying out their promises; and the cases to be dealt with by local employment committees are not numerous.

Mr. BILLING: Is a verbal undertaking to give a man re-employment after the War considered an obligation by the Government, or must a written statement or contract exist?

Mr. WARDLE: I should have thought a verbal statement was sufficient in this case.

Oral Answers to Questions — COST OF LIVING.

Mr. BRIGGS: 95.
asked the Minister of Labour if he is aware of the dissatisfaction which exists amongst workers whose wages vary according to the fluctuations
in the cost of living, as shown in the monthly returns of the "Labour Gazette," they considering the figures of the "Gazette" at variance with the facts and not provable in actual practice, and, as some trade unionists have declared their intention not to carry out their agreements based upon these figures, will he state on what evidence the calculations are formed; will he cause investigation to be made as to their reliability; and will he announce the result of his investigations in an early issue of the "Labour Gazette," and thereby secure the so necessary confidence of both workers and employers in the figures upon which most agreements between them are to-day founded?

Mr. WARDLE: I am aware that some workpeople whose wages vary with fluctuation in the prices index numbers given in the "Labour Gazette" have regarded the decrease shown by those figures in the early part of this year as being at variance with their experience, but I have examined the question of reductions in the price indices, and find that the decline in the figures up to the beginning of June was justified by the reductions in food prices which had been made up to that date. Since then there has been an increase in prices which was shown by the statistics published in the latest issue of the "Labour Gazette" (that for July), and which is continuing. As regards the reliability of the figures published monthly in the "Labour Gazette," they were the subject of a thorough investigation last year by Lord Sumner's Committee on the Cost of Living, who reported that there was every reason to suppose they were accurate and adequate for their purpose.

Mr. BRIGGS: In view of the fact that a Manchester group of trade unionists have threatened to strike unless they are satisfied that the figures in the "Labour Gazette" are correct, and shown to be based upon actual practice, will the Minister of Labour publish his reply to my question in the next issue of the "Gazette"?

Mr. WARDLE: I will make inquiries.

Oral Answers to Questions — APPLICANTS FOR WORK (INTRODUCTION CARDS).

Mr. RAPER: 96.
asked the Minister of Labour if he will consider the advisability of issuing cards to all applicants for work
sent to employers from Unemployment Bureaux, on which such employers to whom the men are sent should be required to endorse briefly their reason for being unable to engage the applicant?

Mr. WARDLE: The hon. Member's suggestion has been anticipated, in the sense that the introduction card now issued by Employment Exchanges to applicants for work, who are sent to employers, contains a space in which employers are invited to give any appropriate remarks. I am afraid it would not be possible to go so far as to require employers to state their reasons for not accepting a particular applicant.

Oral Answers to Questions — ABERDEEN POST OFFICE.

Mr. ROSE: 97.
asked the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that the work in the Aberdeen Post Office has greatly increased; whether he refused to consider the reclassification of this office during the period of the War; whether he will state the units of work for the Aberdeen office immediately prior to the War and at the present moment; and whether the increase is sufficient to warrant the office at Aberdeen being placed in a higher class?.

The ASSISTANT POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Pease): No returns of work were taken during the War which could serve as a basis for the reclassification of offices. The latest unit figures at present available for Aberdeen are under 1,700, the number which would be required to raise the office to a higher class. I will have further inquiry made and communicate with the hon. Member.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL ENGINEERS (SIGNAL SECTION).

Mr. SWAN: 98.
asked the Postmaster-General whether a pioneer in the Royal Engineers (Signal Section) who was not in receipt of full civil pay was liable to a deduction from his Post Office pay in respect of the State allotment authorised in January, 1918; and, if so, whether this was in accordance with the understanding that their pay should be liable to a flat-rate deduction of 7s. per week?

Mr. PEASE: The answer to both parts of the question is in the affirmative. The flat-rate deduction of 7s. a week is in
respect of Army pay only. Under the general regulations, which apply to the whole Civil Service, it is necessary, in addition, to deduct the full amount of any separation allowances issued by the State.

Oral Answers to Questions — BUDA PESTH (REPORTED ARRESTS).

Colonel WEDGWOOD (by Private Notice): asked the Prime Minister whether his attention had been called to the alleged arrest of 4,000 colonists in Buda Pesth; whether there is any truth in this allegation; and what steps the Government are taking to prevent the White Terror and also to protect the Jews in Hungary?

Mr. BONAR LAW: We have received no confirmation whatever of the statement in this question.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Will inquiries be made by General Gordon as to whether there is any truth in this allegation? It has appeared in the Press, and it is certainly desirable that His Majesty's Government should express their feelings of hostility to any White Terror.

Mr. BONAR LAW: I do not think it is reasonable to ask us to take action on a rumour unless there are some means of judging as to whether there is anything in it, but I may tell the hon. and gallant Gentleman that the Council in Paris have already taken the action they think best in view of the circumstances.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Can it be described merely as a rumour when it is in all the papers this morning?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I do not imagine the hon. and gallant Gentleman, or any of us, thinks that that is a proof of its being a fact.

Mr. BILLING: Might not taking action in the matter lead to sending another Expeditionary Force?

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL AIR FORCE.

CONTRACTS.

SELECT COMMITTEE'S REPORT.

Mr. RAPER (by Private Notice): asked the Under-Secretary of State to the Air Ministry what steps he proposes to take to punish all persons in or connected with
the Air Force, no matter what their positions, found guilty of corrupt practices in connection with Air Force contracts by the Select Committee on National Expenditure, and whether, in view of the recent disclosures, he will now without further delay form a small Committee of two or three Members of the House having real business experience and two or three other experienced business men outside this House to supervise the placing and execution of all future Air Force contracts?

Major-General SEELY: Every possible step has already been taken, and will be taken in future, to bring to justice any person in, or connected with, the Air Force, guilty of corrupt practices regarding Air Force contracts. I am not disposed to adopt the suggestion contained in the last part of the question. I shall hope, with your leave, Mr. Speaker, to make a statement on the matter in the course of to-morrow's Debate.

Mr. RAPER: Does the right hon. Gentleman propose to take steps to prosecute those referred to in, the Report of the Select Committee?

Major-General SEELY: Since I have been at the Air Ministry, wherever there has been any case of corruption, I have at once given orders that a prosecution should take place if a prosecution could lie. I propose to continue that.

Mr. RAPER: Is it not a fact that in connection with the instances mentioned in the Report the Government decided for reasons of their own not to institute proceedings?

Major-GENERAL SEELY: No, Sir. I presume my hon. Friend is referring to two cases. One was the case referred to by Sir John Hunter, in which I gave instructions myself, personally, that a prosecution should take place, if a prosecution could lie. I gave these instructions precisely twice to Sir John Hunter, who was then acting under my directions. The Lord Advocate for Scotland decided that a prosecution could not lie. So far as the Air Ministry is concerned the facts are as I have stated, that wherever there has been a possibility of prosecution a prosecution has been ordered. The other was the case of Miss O' Sullivan, who made allegations of corruption. The very day "that these allegations were brought before the Select Committee, presided over by the
right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury), I ordered an inquiry to be held, and it is now proceeding, and if there is ground for prosecution—that is, of course, a legal matter—that prosecution will take place.

Mr. G. LAMBERT: May I ask the Leader of the House whether, if by Mr. Speaker's permission the matter is raised to-morrow as to the prosecution of these officials in the Air Service, the Lord Advocate will be here to defend his somewhat inexplicable action?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I shall make inquiry. I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend that a discussion on that point would be very ineffective unless we hear the Lord Advocate's own explanation of what are his reasons.

Mr. BILLING: Are the officers named by Sir John Hunter still in the employment of the Air Service, and, if so, what positions do they occupy?

Major-General SEELY: I must have notice of that question. 1 do not carry the facts in my mind at the moment as to the particular officers the hon. Member refers to, but I repeat that our policy has been throughout, mine especially, that wherever there could be any question of improper or corrupt dealings a prosecution is at once ordered.

Mr. BILLING: Having regard to the fact that the only reason why these officers have not been prosecuted was owing to a technicality, will the right hon. Gentleman see that if they occupy any position of trust they are forthwith dismissed?

Major-General SEELY: Certainly not. Are we to assume that a man is guilty before he is found to be so by a process of law. I do not carry in my mind who all these people are, but in trying to do what is right in the interest of the State we must do right to the individual.

Mr. BRIANT: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that one of the reasons given by the Lord Advocate why the prosecution should not take place was that the prosecution "might reveal what appears to be insufficiency and absence of control on the part of the representatives of the Ministry on the spot"? Has the opinion on which he reached that decision had any effect on the judgment of the Government?

Major-General SEELY: The information I received from the Lord Advocate was that a prosecution would not succeed. When it was suggested to me that possibly it might bring into disrepute the representatives of either Sir John Hunter or any other officials, I said at once that that had nothing whatever to do with the case, and I confess that I do not understand the particular point. The Lord Advocate is not present, but no doubt it will be cleared up to-morrow. I say at once that such an idea never entered my head or the head of anyone responsible at the Air Ministry; all we want to do is to get at the truth.

Sir F. BANBURY: This matter was the subject of inquiry so long ago as March. No inquiry was granted until June, and then the inquiry was commenced but was not finished owing to the fact that Miss O'Sullivan had not signed her evidence. No further steps were taken until it was made evident to the Air Ministry that inquiries were going on before the Select Committee, and it was then, and then only, on the 25th of last month, that an inquiry was instituted by the Air Ministry.

Major-General SEELY: With your per-permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to reply to that. I have said again and again in this House that if, in this matter, which affects the Douglas-Pennant case, any specific charge of corruption is made, it will be at once inquired into. I have again and again asked for a specific statement, but it was not given. The moment it was given, in response to a question asked by the Select Committee, that very same day an inquiry was ordered.

Captain W. BENN: Who is the Secretary of State for Air, and why is he not here to answer these matters, and will he be here to-morrow?

Mr. BONAR LAW: He will certainly be here to-morrow, and I am sure my right hon. Friend will be glad to have an opportunity of stating the policy of the Air Ministry on this subject.

Mr. STEWART: If there is any prosecution possible, will it be under Scottish law or English law, and is the law of evidence the same in Scotland as in England?

Mr. MacVEAGH: Will the right hon. Gentleman, in the inquiry which he is
now conducting, inquire into the conduct of the official who threatened to dismiss Miss O'Sullivan for making this report?

Major-General SEELY: Yes, certainly!

Lord ROBERT CECIL: rose—

Mr. SPEAKER: Any further statements had better be left over for discussion to-morrow.

Oral Answers to Questions — PROFITEERING BILL.

EVIDENCE BEFORE COMMITTEE.

Mr. HURD: In view of the Debate on the Profiteering Bill to-day, can the Leader of the House say why the House is not in possession of the evidence laid before the Committee by the Food Controller, the President of the Board of Trade, and the Food Commissoner for Scotland?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I have no doubt that the members of the Government concerned will make it quite plain in the Debate what the evidence was.

Mr. HURD: Does the right hon. Gentleman not think it desirable that the evidence put before the Committee should be before the House, in view of to-day's Debate?

Mr. BONAR LAW: The evidence of the President of the Board of Trade was a statement made by him, and he will make a similar statement before the House of Commons.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.

Ordered, "That Government Business be exempted at this day's Sitting from the provisions of the Standing Order (Sittings of the House)."— [Mr. Bonar Law.]

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS,

That they have agreed to,—

Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 1) Bill,
Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill,
Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 3) Bill,
Local Government Provisional Order (No. 5) Bill,
895
Local Government Provisional Order (No. 6) Bill,
Wells Particular Baptist and Congregational Chapels Charities Bill,
National Trust Charity Bill,
Brooke Robinson Museum Charity Bill,
Congregational Chapels Charities Bill,
Eatington Wesleyan Methodist Chapel Property Bill,
Plumptre Hospital Charity Bill,
Headcorn Baptist Chapel Charity Bill, without Amendment.

SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES).

STANDING COMMITTEE D.

Sir Samuel Roberts reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had discharged the following Member from Standing Committee D: Sir Auckland Geddes; and had appointed in substitution: Colonel Sir Hamar Greenwood (in respect of the Courts (Emergency Powers) Bill).

Report to lie upon the Table.

BILL PRESENTED.

ADVERTISEMENTS REGULATION BILL,— "to amend and extend the Advertisements Regulation Act, 1907," presented by Lieut.-Colonel Arthur Murray; supported by Sir Henry Craik and Sir Martin Conway; to be read a second time upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 180.]

Orders of the Day — PROFITEERING BILL.

Order for Second Reading read.

STATEMENT BY SIR AUCKLAND GEDDES.

The PRESIDENT of the BOARD Of TRADE (Sir A. Geddes): I beg to move,
That the Bill be now read a second time.
4.0 P.M.
The Bill which we have to consider today is a carefully considered measure to deal with what all thinking men must regard as a serious evil. It contains within it an implicit definition of profiteering. Perhaps I may summarise it as follows: To profiteer is to make unreasonably large profit, all the circumstances of the case being considered, by the sale to one's fellow-citizens of an article which is one or one of a kind of common use by or for the majority of the population. That is a very important definition, because, as the House will observe, it excludes from the purview of the Bill transactions in connection with export trade.

Mr. KENNEDY JONES: Where are the words "unreasonably large profit" in the Bill?

Sir A. GEDDES: They are implicit in the Bill. The words actually used in the Bill are "unreasonable profits." That meaning attaches to the word "profiteering" in bringing forward this Bill which is to check profiteering. We have been told on a great many occasions that the word "profiteering" is one which is not capable of exact definition. In reply to that I may say that there are many words in the Bill of which no exact definition is possible, where the application of the word depends on the reasonable interpretation. The introduction of the word "profiteering" into the language is really something of a landmark, for it marks an increase in the social consciousness. It shows that people on a large scale, the populace as a whole, are realising that action taken by individuals for their own benefit may be against the interests of the population as a whale, and that is indeed the case with the making of unreasonable profits in connection with articles in common use, or of a kind that is in common use. I would like for a
moment to consider what are some of the effects of profiteering and what are some of the evils which flow from the making of unreasonable profits in the home market. These may readily be divided into two sets, an economic set of evils and a social set. The economic evils affect both our export and our import trade.
During the last few months every thinking man must have been impressed by our trade returns. During the last month the value of our imports exceeded the value of our exports by a rate the equivalent of something over £900,000,000 a year. Everyone present will agree that the greatest economic need of this country at the present time is to stimulate our export trade, to get a greater volume, not only in value but in every possible way, direct export and re-export. Profiteering has a very profound effect upon the export trade. Wherever the home market presents a great opportunity of profit, naturally, as it is more easily reached and more easily observed, the tendency is to concentrate on the home market at the expense of the overseas market, and that is at all times for this country an evil, but at the present time it is a very great evil, perhaps the greatest single, individual evil which flows from profiteering. There is another effect. The making of high profits acts as a magnet to draw imports to the country. It is true that at the present time there are import restrictions imposed. It is also true, and it is within the knowledge of this House, that those import restrictions were imposed in pursuance of a transitional policy which was announced as to terminate, or at least as subject to review from the 1st of September, and within the next few days the Prime Minister will be making a statement to this House as to the trade policy which is to be followed in the immediate future. I am not divulging a secret when I say—it has been said before—that after the beginning of September the restrictions on imports will be much less severe than they are now. If high prices continue in this country, and high profits are obtainable—unreasonably great profits, in some cases unconscionable profits—the pull on imports will be enormously strong, and if that would lead to a great flooding of this country with unnecessary articles and swaying the balance of our trade further against us than it is at present, that is an evil which must flow from profiteering.
Then the big economic aspects of unreasonable profits are important. Take, for example, a single transaction. Imagine an import from some country where the exchange is against us, say, of a couple of million pounds' worth of boots or shoes. If the exchange be against us, profits are high. We want boots, and we want them as cheap as we can get them, but if the profits are high, whatever amount of the profit is unreasonably high is a dead loss to us from the point of view of exchange, and has its counterpart in the fall of exchange, and, therefore, in the increase of price which has to be paid for necessaries, which have to be brought across the exchange. [An HON. MEMBER: "That does not follow! "] It does follow. It follows beyond the possibility of question, that if the exchange is forced down and goods or necessaries have to be brought across the exchange, then more of the currency of this country will have to be paid for those necessaries. These are economic evils, carrying with them in their train social evils, and one of the direct social evils consequent on profiteering is the creation of social unrest, affecting not only labour but all classes of the community. For two reasons. First, there is in the price which includes an unreasonable profit an element which should not be there, and therefore the price is high, but also because those who have to pay that price, and are pinched to pay that price, realise soon and get to know without doubt that somebody is making a large profit, and you have not only the psychological effect of paying a big price, but you have a much more profound source of irritation, the feeling that the sacrifice that is made to pay that big price is made to line someone else's pocket. And there is no room for doubt, and no Member of this House doubts, that at the present time both those feelings which I have described are contributing materially to the disturbance and disorganisation of our industrial life. More than that. The mere fact that it is known to the workers that the employers are perhaps making quite unreasonable profits, makes the workers say, "We shall not produce freely and willingly, because all we are doing is to line the pockets of these men," and therefore profiteering in that way is directly depressing production, and it is a very vital factor in that depression.
There is another factor. Never before in the history of this country have there been so many people who drew their income from the State. You have the pen-
sioners who deserve every penny they get, you have the men still with the Army and with the Navy, and you have the unemployed who draw their incomes from the State. [An HON. MEMBER: "MINISTERS!"] Yes, the Ministers draw small incomes from the State. Then you have the necessary expansion of Government services. No amount of pretending that at does not exist will remove the fact that we have at the present moment a. great number of men and women who directly depend upon the State for the money with which to pay their way. And if prices are high, unreasonably high, if unreasonable profit elements are included in those prices, it all comes back on to the national purse. It simply means that there is a steady demand, an irresistible demand in the circumstances as they exist, apparently a right demand, that payment from the State shall make the individuals who are paid by the State capable of buying the necessaries of life. That is at the present time reacting profoundly upon our financial resources. So let us not minimise, let us not exaggerate either, the evil effects which flow from the making of unreasonable profits. There is a great deal of unresonable profit being made at the present time, and I do not believe that a single Member of this House doubts that statement. Within the last few days I was speaking to a large manufacturer in the North of England. He was talking about profit, and he said to me, "I am thoroughly ashamed to see the profits we are making. "He added, "I have reduced the prices that I am charging to something nearer the proper level, and that means that they are now below the prices my competitors are charging, and it means that on the existing sales I have a profit of £200,000 a year." [An HON. MEMBER: "What is the trade?"] You have not to go to these big cases only; there are cases to be found in many trades. I have seen a great many employers and manufacturers on the subject. One very level-headed, long-sighted man in one of our principal trades said that the chief thing that was the matter with his trade was that the profits were quite unreasonable.
Take a small case. Take the cost of boots and shoes. You go into the shops and you find boots and shoes priced differently in various parts of a town or city or in various parts of the country. There-are, in fact, great divergencies in price, as is quite right, but it becomes rather
astonishing when in districts which are not the fashionable shopping districts you find boots and shoes priced £2 10s. and £3 per pair for a ready-made article, when something similar is and can be bought wholesale at prices varying from 15s. to 25s. per pair. It may be almost impossible to say that these are precisely the same articles, the product of precisely the same factory, but the fact remains that similar articles can be obtained wholesale at from 15s. to 25s. per pair. This morning I asked a man whom I know well, who had actually been engaged in the wholesale purchase of boots and shoes for this country, and he gave me his figures. They worked out, for wholesale purchases, at 15s. to 25s. a pair, with a 28s. maximum as the highest price per pair for similar types to those which are sold in the retail shops at the high prices I have mentioned. It certainly looks as if there was a case for a very careful investigation there, to see that there is no unreasonable profit element attached to that retail price.
Take another instance. A case came before my notice yesterday in connection with building. An estimate was obtained for certain improvements to cottage property, in order to bring cottages which were some seventy years old, up to a really decent modern standard It involved certain alterations outside. The estimate received from a firm which in the past have done the work in that particular part was £3,500. It seemed a very large sum. A careful estimate was made by an expert of everything in connection with the work that required to be done. He estimated that with a reasonable and ordinary profit the cost of the alterations at the prices of to-day should be certainly not over £2,500. Another firm was asked to take the work, and was delighted to get it. This is a case of a firm believing itself to be quite certain of getting work and putting forward a demand for a price £1.000 above that at which another firm, not so large as itself, not with such great facilities as itself, was willing to do the work. I think that is a case of unreasonable profit; and, remember, it is on cottage property, or mainly on cottage property. Those are the sort of things which we know; those are the sort of things which we are to take steps to stop, because of the evils which unreasonable profit-making on a great scale is doing. I do not pretend for one moment, nor does the
Government in bringing forward this Bill pretend, that high prices are entirely due to profiteering.

Mr. JONES: Does the right hon. Gentleman suggest that repairs to cottage property would come under the provisions of this Bill?

Sir A. GEDDES: No, of course they do not. I was merely giving an example of the mental state in which people are at the present time. High prices by themselves are not caused only by profiteering; in fact, given high prices for all, I am sure that profiteering is not the biggest element by far, and I am quite sure that the work which will have to be done under this Bill, when it becomes law, will show that a very great deal of what has been called profiteering, of what has been believed to be profiteering, is not profiteering. But is not that all to the good? Would not such a proof, where it could be given, be the very best thing to undo some of the evils which spring from an erroneous belief? On that side, too, it is necessary to cope with this thing. Of high prices we all know some of the causes. We realise that there is a scarcity of goods in the world—a scarcity of goods in this country. There is the high cost of production, great restriction or limitation, or failure, if one may use that word, in production in certain branches of industry. These things naturally and inevitably force up prices. Take the commodity of coal. There we have a direct example of scarcity forcing up the price. There is another element also in this question of the rise in prices. There is extraordinary foolish buying by people who have money in their pockets for the first time or, who, carrying some slips of paper in their pockets, think themselves wealthy and get rid of those slips of paper foolishly. That is pushing up the cost of everything—extravagance of all sorts. But that does not get rid of the fact that there is also an unreasonable profit element in these high prices, which is dangerous economically, for reasons I have shown both in connection with our export and import trade, and is dangerous socially in the effect which it causes on the minds of those who are suffering from high prices and who believe, perhaps to an unreasonable extent, that profiteering is causing) these high prices, as it is, no doubt, to some extent.
This Bill has been described as a rush and hastily conceived measure. Those who
think that simply do not know what are the facts of the case. This question of profiteering has been before the Government, has been under its consideration, for many months. I myself began work on this subject, and to see what could be done, at least six months ago. It is an extraordinarily difficult thing to see what is best to be done in connection with an evil of this sort. This particular measure passed out of the departmental stage over a month ago. It was considered by an Interdepartmental Conference a month ago. It was considered by the Cabinet on the 14th of last month. It was after that consideration that the Leader of the House announced the formation of a Select Committee of this House to consider the matter, and at the same time he stated quite definitely the Government's views. Here are my right hon. Friend's words:
The Government are fully alive to the seriousness of this question, and propose to set up immediately a Select Committee to examine it. In theme an time the Government are carefully considering what steps may be usefully taken by them without delay.
That was stated in the House, and it was' within the knowledge of the House that the Government were proceeding simultaneously with the Select Committee to consider what could be done. The matter was considered from all sides.
Let us look at what are the possibilities in dealing with this evil. One could classify the possibilities in these oases fairly easily. You could either deal with a problem of this nature—the problem of unreasonable profit—by stepping, as it wore, inside these industries and dealing in the commodity as a Government. For example, it would be quite possible for the Government to undertake the manufacture and sale of clothing. Think how slow it would be in getting any effect on prices. It would take months and months and months before any result appeared.

Sir J. WALTON: It would raise prices.

Sir A. GEDDES: An hon. Gentleman says it would raise prices. That, of course, is not the result of experience in connection with the production either of standard suits or standard boots. But I am not concerned with that method of procedure, because I think it bad. It means that the Government goes into trade and interferes with trade practices and the whole of the ordinary trade rela-
tions, trade channels, and everything else. We rejected that method of procedure after careful consideration. It was strongly pressed upon us by many people that the best way to deal with the situation was actually to go into the processes of production in such things as clothes, underclothing, boots, hats, overcoats, household utensils of all sorts. That has all been pressed on us as being a good way of dealing with this evil. I do not think it is. It would have compelled an enormous Government trading machine, and it would have meant thousands of more officials, and perhaps tens of thousands of officials, and I do not believe it would have got the result. That is the only sort of thing you could do on what I may call the internal side of Government control of prices. Externally you stand outside the trade and try and regulate it in some way to see that there is no unreasonable profit on domestic sales. There are various things which you could do. For example, you could adopt such a method as that which, according to the papers, is under consideration in the United States—that is, to stamp on every article as it leaves the factory the price showing either the cost of production or the wholesale price—I am not quite clear from the papers which—and that that would remain on the article until it was finally sold retail. I do not think that would be a very good way of approaching this problem—that is, to mark an article with the actual price at which it left the factory and then that price remaining there visible up to the moment of retail sale. Though that is quite a possible way of doing it and the United States certainly contemplate doing it, and, according to the Press, probably will do it, it seems to me to have this defect, that it would inevitably lead to a complete recreation of the channels of trade.
You would have, I believe, under such a system an absolute impossibility of retail trade, because practically, broadly speaking, no one would appreciate what elements there were going to make up the difference between the wholesale price and the retail price, and they would actually refuse until they knew the price at which the goods could be retailed. You would have, therefore, the complete destruction of the channels of retail trade. There are people who think that would be a good thing, but we need not concern ourselves with that for the moment, because quite obviously the first effect of such procedure
would be to take the momentum off the going machine, and, instead of getting a good result and instead of getting a reduction in price, I believe you would get a restriction of supply, and, probably, illicit dealing, so that people who had money would get the article through some other channel. Then think, too, of imported goods—and there would, I presume, be some form of stamping at the port of entry—does anyone believe that there would be no examples of incorrect stamping? I believe that such a course would lead simply to a premium on dishonesty. I do not think that is a good way of approaching the subject. It has been suggested there should be price fixation. That has been very strongly pressed on us, namely, that we should fix the price from the centre all over, a flat price, and say, "That is the price of the article." That seems to me to be almost more pernicious than the proposal I discussed a moment ago, because a flat price all over simply means that the big, efficient, well-organised firm which is prepared to sell cheaply, and can sell cheaply, because of its efficient organisation, can sell at a fixed price and make very great profits, and in some cases, I am quite sure, unreasonable profit. The little people, or the inefficient people, have the price as it is fixed, and they drift from incompetence to incompetence. That is, I think, a great criticism which can be levelled against flat - price fixation. If you reject internal control of the home trade as bad, which I think it is, and if you reject flat-price fixation as bad, and I believe it is bad, and if you reject the stamping of the wholesale price upon goods as they leave the factory, and I am sure it is bad, what have you left? You are left with this: you have either got to say, "We are powerless, we can do nothing to limit unreasonable profits, we recognise it is an evil but we can do nothing," or you can do something quite different. You can do what we propose in the Bill. I heard one hon. Member say "Nothing," and another say," This is far too much." Perhaps these statements cancel one another.
We have got here in these proposals a different scheme which we have carefully thought out for many weeks by first of all Departmental investigation, then Interdepartmental, and finally by the Cabinet, and the scheme is this, that we should have powers granted to the Board of Trade for
a period of six months to investigate the costs of articles, to investigate the margin of profits that are being made, and that the information upon which those investigations are based should be confidential, and that that information should be utilised by the Board of Trade to get a real knowledge of what is going on, and of the extent of the evil, and where a glaring case is found, that the Board of Trade should be able to prosecute, and that that prosecution should be before the Court defined in the Bill, one of the ordinary Courts of the land. In order to enable the Board of Trade to cope with the mass of inquiries that must be made without increasing the bureaucracy, which we want to avoid, it is provided that the Board of Trade should be empowered to establish local committees, which, on behalf of the Board of Trade, would investigate local conditions for them, and that those committees will share with the Board of Trade, under the delegated authority of the Board of Trade, the right to prosecute where they find a glaring case, and in the case of any individual complaint to declare the price which would give, a reasonable profit and to require the seller to repay to the complainant any amount paid by the complainant in excess of that price, and in order to prevent frivolous proceedings, to compel the complainant to purchase the article at the price of which he complained. Those seem to me to be very legitimate and very reasonable powers to confer upon such bodies.

Lord ROBERT CECIL: I should like to know, where there are proceedings in a Summary Jurisdiction Court in consequence of the refusal of any trader to comply with an order made by one of these committees, whether the fact that the order was so made will be the only thing to be tried by the Summary Jurisdiction Court or whether that Court will be able to retry the whole question, and to consider in point of fact whether the actual price was reasonable or unreasonable?

Sir A. GEDDES: If my right hon. Friend will look at the Bill at the beginning of page 2, he will see that the proceedings before a Court of Summary Jurisdiction are in lieu of any of three alternative Acts.

Lord R. CECIL: I was referring to the power which enables the Government to demand a fine up to, I think, £50.

Sir A. GEDDES: That is a different thing in connection with the production of information. If the Noble Lord will read he will see that the three powers which are proposed to bestow on the Board of Trade can only be exercised in lieu of the power to prosecute for the offence, but in the ease of refusal to disclose information or for giving wrong information, a penalty comes in, but the things are quite distinct. Over and above that there is a very important provision providing that in the event of any of these committees to which powers are delegated deciding that an individual is to do two of the three things I have described, he may appeal to an appeal body which will investigate the case again with the confidential information before it, and decide. That appeal body may also prosecute if it considers the case a glaring case and one of a bad typo, but, over and above these provisions, there is a further provision in the Bill which is of importance, and that is Clause 3, where
the Board of Trade may, if they think fit. authorise local authorities, subject to such conditions as the Board may impose, to purchase and sell any article or articles of any class to which this Act applies, and any local" authority so authorised shall have all necessary powers for the purpose.
That is a provision which is intended to allow the community to protect itself in a general way, and not by means of individual complaint against conditions of the nature of which I am talking, against cases of excessive profit-making; and that these powers in Clause 3 will be among the most useful powers conferred by the measure I firmly believe. I think experience has already gone sufficiently far to show that the community, through the exercise of powers of this nature, is able to deal with the evil of profiteering to a very considerable extent at the retail end, but, of course, not in the other parts of the course in which it may occur, and so I would say to the House that this Bill embodies what we believe to be the best possible suggestion with regard to this difficult problem of tackling the making of quite unreasonable profits. We have examined other avenues, and we have explored them thoroughly. We see great difficulties in administering fairly and fully the powers which this Bill confers, but we see far greater difficulties in approaching the problem or in seeking for a solution of the problem along any of the other lines which I have indicated, and, great as are the difficulties, great as they
will be in administering the provisions of this Bill; there would be far greater difficulties and dangers arising from leaving the present position untouched. I firmly believe that it would be wrong of the Government to allow this House to disperse for a period of weeks at this time and not to ask from the House a weapon which it could use to deal with these great and, I think I may say, these admitted evils, and this weapon which we are asking for now will, I feel sure, in spite of the obvious difficulties of administration, not effect everything that we would wish. That is impossible in such a huge sphere and so complicated a problem, but it will achieve much, and I feel myself that in getting the local committees to work, committees which will have delegated to them under the proposals of the Bill the powers the Board of Trade is asking for, we may rely without any fear upon the sound common sense of the citizens of this country. It has been well said that we are a nation of shopkeepers. We are certainly a nation of traders, and people are not going to be so foolish— there may be individual mistakes—as to impose conditions that will make trade impossible. I feel perfectly confident that their sound, shrewd common sense, of which there are such reserves in the country, will make the provisions of this Bill work more smoothly than those who look at it merely from the centre might imagine, and I say more. The mere fact that it is intended that the powers should be widely delegated will really give much greater confidence in the administration of the Act, as I hope it soon may be, than if the whole of the administration were done from or at the centre.

An HON. MEMBER: Who are the local authorities? There is no definition of local authorities in the Bill.

Major O'NEILL: Does the Bill apply to the whole of the United Kingdom?

Sir A. GEDDES: With regard to the last point, yes, to the whole of the United Kingdom.

An HON. MEMBER: Ireland?

Sir A. GEDDES: Yes, Ireland is still part of the United Kingdom. It applies to all parts of the country. I told the Committee we did not intend that it should apply to Ireland, but Ireland was so perturbed at not being allowed to have it applied to her that she pressed to be included.

An HON. MEMBER: Who is Ireland in this matter?

Sir A. GEDDES: Speaking in this matter, it is the Government of Ireland.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: Which Government?

Sir A. GEDDES: The Government. The whole of the United Kingdom is included in the provisions of the Bill. The local authorities are any local authorities that the Board of Trade may delegate the authority to, as it says clearly in the Bill:
The Board of Trade may, as and when it appears to them necessary or expedient, establish, or require any local authority or authorities to establish," etc.
But those who are actually in contemplation as the authorities to whom, in the majority of cases, such powers will be delegated are the same local authorities as those which presided over the areas laid down in the National Registration Act of 1915. There is no need, so far as the Bill is concerned—and I think it is undesirable —that it should more closely specify the statutory local authority. So we bring this Bill before the House for Second Reading. I believe we have put forward a scheme which is the best possible in the circumstances, not imagining that it is an ideal scheme, because there is no ideal scheme. It is very easy to criticise any scheme of this nature, but it is a much more difficult thing to construct a scheme of this nature which shall be administratively possible, and we believe that this is an administratively possible scheme, and that it will do much to remove the evils which do arise from the making of unreasonable profits in our domestic trade.

Mr. KENNEDY JONES: I beg to move, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day three months."
I think most Members of this House will be in complete agreement with the right hon. Gentleman that there has been and is still a great deal of profiteering going on in this country. He went on to say that it was desirable—and I agree with him there again—that an end should be put to that as speedily as possible. He also went on to describe the various weapons which might be used, and he dismissed all of them except the weapon which is contained in this Bill, and it is precisely because I do not believe that thin is a weapon that will go off that I rise for the purpose of moving the Motion to
reject the Bill. I want to say at once, before I proceed to an examination of the principles of the Bill, that I placed that Motion on the Paper with no desire to protect profiteers. No one has a greater resentment than I against those who make, or have made, large and unreasonable profits out of the agony of this country, and no one would more gladly support real action, action genuinely designed by the Government to safeguard the interests and the pockets of the people, and especially of those of the middle classes, who to-day find the burden of living almost unendurable. I am satisfied from a close study of this Bill, which until the right hon. Gentleman made his explanation I had really assumed to be a rushed Bill, a Bill designed in a panic—in fact, I am not quite certain that he has convinced me to the contrary now, because I thought that Sub-section (2) of Clause 1 had been hurriedly dropped on the way to the printers and was not included in the Bill, which appears without a Sub-section (2) of Clause 1.

Sir A. GEDDES: This actual draft of the Bill was done quite at the end in order to get the shortest possible Bill for the convenience of the House of Commons. That is quite a different thing from the general principle of the Bill.

Mr. JONES: I am satisfied from a close study of this Bill that it will be ineffective, that there is not enough possible good in it to counterbalance the positive harm it will cause to trade, that it embodies principles unfair and unjust from the point of view of English law, and that it will create, despite what the right hon. Gentleman has said this afternoon, another vast, expensive, and cumbrous Department, controlled solely by the Board of Trade, without reference to Parliament. Let us come to the Bill itself. It provides for the creation of a vast new bureaucracy with complete control over the greater part of our trade from the arrival of the raw material in this country, or from the production of the raw material in this country, to the point at which the manufactured article reaches the purchaser. That seems to me a very wide power, and that is to be done with a view to checking profiteering, a word which is not defined in the dictionary and which might be held to prevent the making of any profit at all, but which. for the purpose of this Bill, is defined in the Bill as the making of an unreasonable profit. There are two points of
view, it seems to me, from which this Bill should be examined: Will it as it stands speedily and certainly achieve the object of preventing unscrupulous traders from enhancing prices to the detriment of the people? That is the first point, and the second point is, Can the provisions of this Bill as it is framed be put into operation without inflicting serious injury on the delicate and complex machinery under which trade and commerce are carried on? I am in entire agreement with the right hon. Gentleman and with the Government that illegitimate profit-making, if it can, should be made impossible. No one ought to be permitted to utilise the nation's necessity to exploit the people with unfair prices.
5.0 P.M.
But the point is, Will the machinery of this Bill work quickly to that end? What is to happen when this Bill becomes law? The Board of Trade, under Clause 1, automatically is to investigate prices, costs, and profit of any article declared to be of a kind in common use by the majority of the population, and it will have power to require any person to appear before these inquisitional panels, which will beset up, to furnish such information and produce such documents as may be required. Think what it covers ! It covers clothes, boots, beds, bedding, chairs, tables, pianos, shirts, underclothing, hats, cocoa, cigarettes. There is no limit. [An HON MEMBER: "Quite right!"] There is no Schedule in the Bill. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why should there be?"] I am coming to that. There is no limit to the scores upon scores of articles which are of a kind in common use by the majority of the population to-day. If you are going to investigate the prices, costs, and profit of all these things, from the beginning to the end—from the raw material to the article in the shop it can only be done through the medium of costing departments. And think of the number and size of the costing departments necessary to cover these hundreds of articles—to go methodically and meticulously through the whole range of manufacture and trading, from the sale of the raw material to the appearance of the article in the shop ! Think of the bureaucracy which has to be created to deal with this Bill! And the people in these costing departments will have to be highly-trained experts if anything like a reasonable decision is to be arrived at. They will have to investigate methods of production, of distrubution,
and of sale; consider the question of quality, for profiteering can be effected even more easily by a reduction of quality than by an increase of price. Government ale is the supreme proof of that. They will have to consider what a reasonable profit should be in relation to the current value of money, the capital employed, and the risk of capital being unremunerative by reason of the cost of labour or the shortage of world supplies. In short, accurately and scientifically, these panels, or committees, or whatever the Board of Trade is going to sot up in Whitehall—unless they take a London hotel—will have to analyse the whole circumstances of trade before they can arrive at a decision as to what is a reasonable profit.
The real point of that argument is this: How long is that going to take? This Bill is only to be in force for six months. May I suggest that it will take many months at least to arrive at accurate conclusions on this point, and that the whole of the six months for which this Bill will be in force will have to be consumed in arriving at decisions? So far, therefore, as present conditions are concerned, there is not likely to be any speedy amelioration. And since the Government do not control the purchase of raw materials, when you have finished one set of costings you may, because the raw material market has entirely changed, in price and character, have to begin all over again. That is one of the great difficulties I see about this Bill—the long time which investigation must take. And during that period the unfortunate manufacturer, the wholesaler, and the retailer will be waiting to know what the Board of Trade considers a reasonable profit—waiting to know whether they have been guilty in their trading of an offence which will render them liable to a fine of £200 or to six months' imprisonment. I do suggest to hon. Members that the trader, whether he be manufacturer, wholesaler, or retailer, cannot be expected to go about, his business while he is in a state of uncertainty as to whether he is or is not breaking, or likely to break, the law. All this work of investigation, which the Board of Trade is automatically to set up the moment this Bill becomes law, will have to be gone through again when the Board receives a complaint that a profit has been made—and not only that a profit has been made, but that a profit has been sought on the sale of an article which is,
in view of all the circumstances, unreasonable. Anyone can complain, and, under paragraph (b) of Clause 1, the Board of Trade has to investigate the complaint.

An HON. MEMBER: Has he to buy the article?

Mr. JONES: Not necessarily; but he can be made to purchase the article after they have fixed the price. Every one of the 20,000,000 adults in the country can complain. One trader, apparently, can complain of another, because if you think the profit sought on the sale of an article is too high, you can complain. Has the right hon. Gentleman conjured up in his mind the clerical staff which will be required to deal with the complaints—? And if the complaints received are to be investigated, and the parties are to be heard, has he visualised, or formed any conclusion, as to the size and number of Star Chambers which will be required for this work? I read the other day that the right hon. Gentleman, before the Select Committee, described this as a "rough-and-ready scheme." I think it is a little more rough than ready, and that it will be wholly ineffective in solving the question of high prices, while I am certain—although I am not so much, but yet I am to some extent, concerned about that—I am certain it is going to do harm to trade and to business generally, to work to the detriment of the small trader, and to complete confusion in the world of buying and selling.
To my mind, the unsound principle of the Bill does not end here. The Board of Trade, without having made any Order declaring the proper price to be charged for any article, can take proceedings against the seller (which expression is defined as including any person offering to sell) in a Court of summary jurisdiction. I see the name of my right hon. Friend the Labour Minister is on the back of the Bill. I am not a lawyer, but he is; and I want to say that such a provision seems to me to violate the principles upon which penal legislation has hitherto been. and must properly be, founded. There is no definition in this Bill of any offence, and any seller, however innocent of intention, may suddenly find himself in the position of a defendant in Police Court proceedings for doing something which has not been defined, and which he had no reason to
think was an offence. The only possible definition of an offence here is that he was making an unreasonable profit. What is a reasonable profit? Are you going to take your definition of a reasonable profit the basis of the little trader, which would give enormous profits to the large dealer; or are you going to take the basis of the large dealer, which would wipe the little trader out of existence 1 And if you are going to take each case on its merits, how can you possibly accomplish the work in the. six months? Because, until you have completed this costing system, fixed your profit, and declared what is a reasonable profit, no tribunal in any part of the country will have any standard to. govern their decisions. Meanwhile, how is the trader to define a reasonable profit, and if he does so define it to his own satisfaction, how is he to guess whether the Board of Trade will agree with him? More than that. If you do not intend to define in the Bill the offence for which a trader may be fined or sent to prison—and here again the Labour Minister, with his great legal experience, may be helpful to the House—how can any information or summons or indictment be properly framed? It is surely one of the oldest principles of English law that all information laid for the purpose of a prosecution should define the offence clearly and definitely, without duplicity or uncertainty. But this Bill does not even propose to enact that the selling of an article at an excessive price is to be deemed an offence. Nor does the Bill, by its title, seek to prohibit profiteering, but merely to check it, so that, under this Clause, when a trader is summoned, the act committed by him will only be declared an offence at the end of the proceedings, when the decision of the Court is given. That will be a new, and, in my view, a vicious principle in English law—that a Court should have the duty of defining the offence as well as that of deciding whether it has been committed. It is a point which goes far beyond this Bill, and I venture—I do not want to use the word "warn"—but I venture to entreat the Government to hesitate before they begin to establish precedents of this sort, for if you once begin to establish precedents of this sort, you are, in my view, heading towards the worse characteristics of Soviet rule.
Unsound and defective as I hold this Bill to be, so far as the Board of Trade is concerned, it is even more so when you come
to the provisions which enables the right hon. Gentleman to require local authorities to establish local or other committees, to whom the Board may delegate any or all of their powers, and provides that the effect of any order by a, committee under such delegated powers should be the same as that of an Order of the Board of Trade. It seems to me bad enough to have a Government Department answerable to Parliament endowed with arbitrary powers of fixing the price for any given article, and compelling the vendor to sell and the purchaser to purchase, but it is infinitely worse if these powers are to be exercised by local committees established all over the country, not necessarily by the Board of Trade themselves, but by any local authorities who may be directed by the Board of Trade to set them up. Such local committees—and as to this I have examined the Bill very closely—would apparently be answerable to nobody, though the seller, but not, it will be observed, the purchaser, would have a right of appeal to a county appeal tribunal—another set of bodies to be called into being by the Board of Trade under regulations, as yet undefined. It seems to me—and I place the view in all humility before the Gentlemen on the Front Bench who have gone into this matter—in the highest degree undesirable to place in the hands of local committees the very extensive and undefined powers contained in this Bill.
Such committees would in a great number of cases almost certainly include local tradesmen. Yet they would be given power to adjudicate upon the affairs of their rivals, and even, it would seem, upon complaints against the members of the committee, and thus to place their fellow citizens in that position in which they could be heavily fined, or sent to prison, for an offence. or for doing something the propriety of which in many cases might only be a matter of opinion. There is a power, I think—the right hon. Gentleman described it as a very fine power, and a thing that was going to relieve the situation—in Clause 3, a power under which the Board of Trade may authorise local authorities to purchase and sell any articles, and any local authority so authorised shall have all the necessary powers for the purpose. In other words, this is municipal trading in all sorts and kinds of articles. The losses, I suppose, are to come either out of the rates or from
the Treasury. Is that a power which this House proposes to give to the right hon. Gentleman? I would ask this House whether, under the provisions of the Bill with, as I think I have shown, its complicated machinery, its possible 1,600 local committees—because there were 1,600 military tribunals, and I dare say they are modelled on those that have so obsessed my right hon. Friend—possibly 1,600 county appeal tribunals, this Star Chamber inquiry, its numerous costing departments, and machinery—whether it is at all likely to check that which we are calling profiteering either now or in the immediate future, and whether this measure is not on the face of it doomed to be ineffective, and likely to do a great deal of injury to trade than to benefit purchasers?
No one, as I said at the outset, is more anxious to check and kill profiteering than I am. It is a gross offence. But high prices in the circumstances of to-day do not necessarily mean profiteering, and I want to lay emphasis upon this. The price fixed by the Government can only be operative and maintained if the Government are in a position to bring supplies to the market; for you cannot control prices unless you control supplies. If we do not want to make confusion worse confounded, to make the situation worse than it is to-day, it seems to me idle to pass into law so vague and indefinite a measure as this, leaving the filling in of vital details to the Department presided over by the right hon. Gentleman. I am not sure he knows very much about trade. He may be a superman. I am told that only supermen are grown in his family. But if this Bill represents his views—and I take it he is the author of the measure—as to now-trade and profiteering are to be handled, I do not think he knows very much about trade. Let us be clear in this: If we pas. this Bill we are handing over the absolute control of the greater part of our trade to the right hon. Gentleman, just as we have handed over the control of transport to the brother of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Cambridge(Sir E. Geddes). It is another blank cheque for the family. Really, I think we have had enough of that kind of legislation.
The only argument I have seen put forward for this Bill, and my right hon. Friend adumbrated it this afternoon, is that its passage through this House would put a stop to profiteering—that the profiteer would surrender at the first threat?
There may be a modicum of reasoning in that, so far as the small retailer of halfpennyworths of cherries is concerned, but I do not quite see in the same light the big wholesale dealers, the trust magnates, the brewery companies, and the mass production manufacturers. That may have been the belief in which this measure was framed. If it fails, as I think it will fail— if the House passes it—the blame will be on the head of the right hon. Gentleman the author of the measure, who, by the time the failure is manifest, will, I take it, be on the other side of the Atlantic lecturing, and free from the wrath that will fall upon the Government. The belief that the real profiteer will surrender immediately this Bill passes into law is not one I share, nor do I think it one worthy of the dignity of this House that it should approach a measure from the point of view of a threat. Profiteering is in the main the result of speculation which ought not in these days to be permitted. When I was at the Food Ministry we had distinct evidence of speculating in all sorts of food commodities—outside speculation. I am sure my right hon. Friend the ex-Food Controller will bear me out—distinct evidence of outside speculation forcing up prices in all kinds of foods Only on Tuesday w e had the Food Controller giving evidence before the Select Committee to the effect that sometimes foods changed hands five times, each time enhancing the price. This Bill does not deal with that. It; will not touch it. We had the President of the Board of Trade at the same Select Committee to which I have referred, when that fact was brought to his notice, telling the Committee that he did not think it possible to meet that by any preconceived scheme. Until that is met profiteering will continue. I suggest it can be met by a system of licensing dealers in all articles where you desire to keep prices free from speculation.

Sir A. GEDDES: Licences?

Mr. JONES: Yes, licences. Where it is necessary to impose a limitation of profit I suggest it can be met by Government control of the supply. This Bill does not deal with questions of that kind. To my mind it does not touch the real core of this evil of profiteering. It only provides opportunities for the small tradesmen to be made a scapegoat, while profiteers on a big scale go undetected and unpunished. It creates a central authority without a
defined policy, which may attempt to function through the disjointed action of the local authorities, which will create confusion and may stop supplies, and in many cases may injure supplies, and all result in no benefit to the purchaser. It is because 1 believe this that I move that this Bill be read a second time three months hence.

Sir WATSON RUTHERFORD: I beg to second the Amendment.
I was elected to support this Government and in seconding the Motion for the rejection of this Bill it will be obvious that I am not doing so from any point of view of mere opposition. It is simply for the reason that when I read the Bill I got such a shock at the contents of it, and at the way in which it was proposed to deal with the matter, called profiteering, that I felt-it was my duty to take more than a mere passing interest in the matter. I yield to nobody in feeling that those who during the War, and during the agony of this country, made unreasonable profit out of any articles in common use were no friends to the community, and such proceedings should certainly have been put an end to at the first reasonable opportunity. When I read this Bill I realised at once it was the kind of Bill with which we have unfortunately become rather familiar dur-into the War. A Bill that does not appear to have received any measure of consideration or revision. We do not expect to find good grammar in an Act of Parliament. But when I saw on the very first line of the Bill an obvious slip in elementary grammar that would certainly have been corrected if the Bill had ever been read over, it seems a pity. When I looked at Clause 2, I found that there are, or were, two or three Sub-sections of the Clause, and that these come, or ought to come, between Clause 1 and Clause 3. I could not help thinking when I got to that point: I wonder what it is the Minister has struck out from the middle of Sub-section (2), because this important Clause has really gone somewhere, and, perhaps, if we do get the advantage of seeing that missing Clause "we might possibly see something that would help us in the matter of profiteering which is not in the rest of the Bill!
This legislation with which we are becoming, or have become, unfortunately, too familiar during the War, requires consideration in this instance. It was bad. There was a most important Act of Parliament passed one afternoon—and I note the
right hon. Gentleman proposes to pass this in a couple of days, to-day and tomorrow—one Act, I say, had to be passed in the course of an afternoon during the War, and in it there was an unfortunate slip. That Act ruined a. concern with which I was connected, and incidentally the matter cost me a good many thousands of pounds personally. Of course, during the War we were obliged to submit to these things, however slipshod, provided there was an evil to be avoided or a good to be gained. We had to take these things as they were presented to us: to do our best in the general interest of the country, and be prepared to swallow any fairy tale from any Minister as to the good things that were going to result from the Bill he chose to bring forward. We had a couple of illustrations given to us by the right hon. Gentleman. He picked out boots.
I know countries not very far from here where the prices of those same boots to which the right hon. Gentleman referred are £8 and £10 per pair. I do not know whether we can stop any profiteering; certainly we cannot in those other countries. I expected that we should have had the same suggestion made to us, and some illustration given. But that question of Boots, connected as it is with all the interferences by Government Departments with the price of leather, and from whom the leather can be got, and what leather shall be allowed to be imported—all these things go to build up the retail prices of boots. The other illustration was concerning a building contract. The idea of suggesting that that was profiteering is absurd, when there may be fifty other good reasons for a high estimate at that time which were entirely outside the right hon. Gentleman's purview. It seems to me that if the right hon. Gentleman wanted two cases he might have mentioned butter and cheese, articles out of which one of the Government Departments have been profiteering to the extent of £1,800,000, with the result that we could not get a bit of butter or cheese at any price whatever. Had the right hon. Gentleman wanted another article he might have mentioned tea, out of which a Government Department has admittedly made £1,000,000, and there is an asterisk to it, which means that there is another £1,000,000 to be added when the figures come out. That is. taken out of the pockets of the poorest of the community. Are these gentlemen to be prosecuted? I think they ought to be. We never ought to have given them
the power which they have used in this astounding manner, and instead of passing an Act to give them more power in some new public Department, I would ask that the existing powers should be done away with, and we ought to let things go into their normal course
The President of the Board of Trade gave us dates when the Government began to take this matter into their consideration. Curiously enough, whilst the Government were taking 80 per cent. of the excess profits, they never thought of pointing out that these people were thieves, but now that they have reduced excess profits to 40 per cent. almost in the same week, they thought it was a very wrong thing to do, and now they have to take this tax off the sooner these people cease making these profits the better. That is the sort of argument that must have weighed with the Government in arriving at this Bill. The right hon. Gentleman said that his Department had been asked to go into trade to regulate the supply and to manufacture. What did he say about that? He said that it was a bad idea, and that it was very bad for a public Department to do anything of the sort, and he proposes to carry out those principles by allowing every local district council to go into business. We might be willing to let the Board of Trade go into business, but when the right hon. Gentleman asks us to allow every local authority, including boards of guardians and rural district councils, to go in for selling meat, potatoes, and all kinds of food, I really think the limit has been reached. I yield to no man in my desire to stop profiteering, but this Bill goes about it in a wrong way. I do not believe that the distributing trades are making these profits, and the real source is higher up, and those are places which this Bill makes no attempt to reach.

Sir A. GEDDES: I am sure my hon. Friend would not wish to remain under a misapprehension of that sort. I am afraid he does not realise that this Bill covers the whole field. My hon. Friend who moved the rejection very clearly recognised that point, and any suggestion that it only deals with retailers is really not in accordance with the provisions of the measure.

Sir W. RUTHERFORD: I am glad to hear that the Board of Trade propose not merely to deal with this subject through the local councils, but they are really
going to take some action at the source. I suppose they have some idea how they are going about it, but I have been on a Government Committee at the Treasury for some four months past, and my opinion of their business capacity has not been increased by my experience of these. I do not think any Government source is really the right kind of machinery to set up with a. view to dealing with this evil. I believe this Bill from the very outset is doomed to be ineffective. There is no definition of the offence. What is profiteering? For an indefinite offence there is to be a £200 fine and six months' imprisonment. Drastic powers are to be vested in the Board of Trade, and who are the Board of Trade? There is a President, but we may not always have the same President, and a large number of these gentlemen are paid officials. I have for a good many years persistently raised my voice on every occasion against it when it has been proposed to vest any extraordinary powers of interfering with the liberty of the subject in any paid officials whatever in connection with any Department of the State. I have always done so because I conscientiously object to that kind of procedure.
These gentlemen have power to delegate their duties and to make regulations which are not disclosed. What are they going to be? I observe that there is no provision in this Bill under which this House is going to have any power over those regulations. I certainly think that when regulations fixing the procedure of some 1,600 or 1,800 committees which are going to be formed all over the country, and are going to receive millions of complaints about the price of half a pound of this up to the price of a piano, when we contemplate the kind of thing that is going to happen, and the millions of complaints more or less unfounded that people are going to make unofficially behind the backs of the tradesmen, we ought to see what the regulations are, and we ought to have some control over those regulations under which the local authorities are to work. I am sorry to see these powers delegated in this way with undisclosed regulations. The "Times" this morning uses this phrase with regard to the position. It says:
Heaven help the magistrates and local committees and Appeal Tribunals who have got the job of working this Bill under these unknown regulations!
I simply quote that as embodying exactly what I felt with regard to this Bill when I put down my Motion to reject it some days ago. You are trying a man for an offence without any attempt to define the offence. I do not know whether from a legal point of view it is possible to do it, but I believe it is. I believe an indictment could be framed. There are hon. Members who have had experience of these matters, and perhaps they will tell us. I notice that every director of every company is liable personally unless he can prove his innocence. I can understand that any director of any compay who took an illegitimate profit knowingly, and could be proved to have done so', should go to gaol. One is prepared to admit that, but that he should go to gaol unless he can prove his innocence is exactly the converse to the ordinary principle of British justice, which is that he must be sent to gaol when he has been proved to be guilty. No doubt we shall have claims made against tradesmen under the Bill, and they are to be confidential. When is the tradesman going to get information with regard to something he has sold. There is no limit. A number of complaints may be made, and he does not know who has made them or what they are. He has no means of refuting them, and as a matter of fact you are to have a Star Chamber Court set up. I should have thought that it was impossible in this twentieth century to suggest in this country that there is to be a crime manufactured of which there is no definition, and that anybody should be able to lay a complaint behind the back of a threatened man, and he would not know what the complaint is, because it is to be confidential, and not disclosed. That is carrying the thing too far, and it is time this House interfered.
It is estimated that the expenses of these tribunals will be about £50,000 for six months. There is no figure in the Bill. [An HON. MEMBER: It is in the Memorandum."]Yes, it is in the Memorandum. The President of the Board of Trade proposes to place the whole expense of these local tribunals on the local rates, but I think the local rates are just about high enough. The whole expense of investigating hundreds of thousands of complaints, travelling expenses, and everything else, are to be paid to these new rule-of-thumb committees, which will probably have some co-operators on them. I have no hostility to co-operators, but these gentlemen are to receive this money,
and the expense is to come out of the rates. Probably we shall be asked to pass a financial Resolution to cover all the extra expenses of the Board of Trade, in order that these local authorities may be empowered to go into business. I suppose they will open a store and commence selling all sorts of articles.
The first thing that occurred to me when I read that these authorities were going to be allowed to trade was, Where is the capital going to come from? Is there going to be a rate to find the capital? It is all very fine to say that if there is a loss it will have to be made up out of the rates, but there is something else to be done before you find out whether there is a profit or a loss. You cannot go into business without capital, and who is going to find it? Will it have to come out of the rates? The local authorities have no power to find it, and I ask the House what is the use of putting a Clause into a Bill of this kind granting to local authorities power to go into business? There is no power of any sort or kind in the Bill enabling them to raise capital for this purpose. I have in my own Constituency a very large number of one-man-business men, keeping small shops. They were called up and had to go to the War. They did not like it, because most of them were of an advanced age and had families. From the nature of the case, they were carrying on their business single-handed, and they were called upon to make a sacrifice out of all proportion to the sacrifice of everybody else. Many of them have come back to find their business half ruined during their absence, and now, I suppose, by this Bill, enabling all kinds of old ladies to come and complain about any article bought in the shop, the right hon. Gentleman will finish the ruin of the majority of them.
What is the object of this Bill? There can be but one answer to that question. It is to hoodwink the long-suffering public into the belief—the erroneous belief—that the Government are doing something in relation to this crying evil. The Government want to be able to say, "—It is admitted that profiteering is going on, and it is admitted that it is serious. We, at all events, have provided you with the machinery to protect yourselves. We do not see our way, as a Government, to do anything, but we are establishing these local committees, and you can go and complain to them, and prosecute, and protect yourselves. "I do not believe that any
grievance will ever be either properly ventilated or dealt with under the machinery of this Bill. The only utility of it will be to try and persuade the long-suffering public that something is being done for them when it is not. The Bill will cost a lot of money. It is going to create an additional bureaucracy, it will be a further interference with trade and competition, and I am satisfied that the state of affairs at the end of six months, if the Bill is passed in its present shape, will be worse than it is now. You must get at this profiteering at the source, if you are going to get at it at all. The whole of the machinery of the Bill is misconceived. The mere fact of delimiting a space is sufficient to enable the people connected with the sale of the goods to pass on the offence from one area to another. I cannot, for the life of me, see how that is capable of ending in anything but endless confusion. Large dealers and small dealers, with capital and without capital, single shops and multiple shops, all kinds of different articles, and a vast number of shops that are admittedly selling some articles below cost as an advertisement to bring people to their shops in order to sell a number of other articles at a profit—all these are complications which we cannot avoid in this subject.
I join with the President of the Board of Trade in admitting that every one of the alternatives that he himself has suggested is impossible and will not do. I may be asked, and I think it is a fair question, "Have you any right, as a supporter of the Government, to criticise this Bill and say it will not do, unless you yourself have some suggestion to make as to how you would deal with the subject? "This is my suggestion. The War is now over. There were a vast number of official interferences with trade in almost every direction necessarily imposed upon this country during the War. Every one of those restrictions has had the effect of adding to the price of the article. The majority of them have really prevented the supply rather than facilitated it in those fields where the supply has been touched. I am absolutely against the continuance of the whole of these restrictions for five minutes longer than can be helped. I believe, if they were swept away to-morrow and if once more free competition and free course of trade were allowed its proper influence in this country, that in a very short time it would stop all undue profiteering. If some is still found
to be going on in some necessary or proprietary articles, then let the Treasury come here and take its fair, and more than fair, proportion of the profits of those people, and they can be readily ascertained. Those are the remedies which I would adopt, but the whole idea, as well as the whole machinery of this Bill, is entirely misconceived, and it is in that spirit and for those reasons that I second its rejection.

Mr. HIGHAM: I rise to address the House for the second time, because I feel that I should not be doing justice to the Constituency which I represent if I did not welcome the introduction of this Bill. That Constituency is a poor one. The bulk of the people are hard-working people who have to buy in the best markets which they can The bulk of the shopkeepers are small shopkeepers, and there are a few factories in the district. On behalf of those people and on behalf of the bulk of the small shopkeepers and manufacturers, I support this Bill, and I propose to say that which I believe the bulk of the poor people of this country feel. It is time that this Government found some method of dealing with profiteering. I have listened with considerable interest to my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey (Mr. K. Jones) and the hon. Member for one of the Divisions of Liverpool (Sir W. Rutherford). I had hoped that from two such business men we should get a more constructive measure than that which has been introduced by the Government. I thought that their criticism would not be destructive but constructive, and I have been very disappointed. On the one hand, the hon. Member for Hornsey criticised the Bill because, he said, it would create a bureaucracy and he wanted to save the State the money. On the other hand, the Seconder of the rejection resented a Government Department making a profit for the State rather than letting the profiteer himself make it, and so saving money to the people of this country. I did not find in either of those speeches anything. to justify this House in rejecting this measure.
I have asked the Government for months how they propose to remedy profiteering. I am one of their keenest critics when they do not act. If they take a long time, we say that they are a Wait-and-See Government. If they decide quickly to do some definite thing for the State, we call
them hasty. I believe that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade has not only carefully considered this question himself, but has also considered it with other Ministers. I believe that the Government are anxious to solve the question of profiteering. They have been able to find only one way, but, at least, it is a way. They say to the bulk of the people of the country, "We are introducing a Bill to check profiteering." That is, at least, something definite. We propose to do it by setting up tribunals. We propose to get to the bottom of the question and find out who are the people who are charging either too high prices or giving short weight. The Proposer and the Seconder of the rejection of the Bill have suggested that it would have a very bad influence on trade and that traders generally would resent it. I hope I may be forgiven for saying that I think I know the spririt of as many business men as the Proposer and Seconder of this Resolution, and I believe that the majority of the traders of this country are most anxious that the bulk of those people who are illegitimately profiteering should be marked, so that they may be identified from those who are playing fair and square with the people, and I believe that most of them are doing so.
I do not think that the honest trader fears being dragged before a tribunal, and I am sure that the effect of this Bill on the dishonest trader, as fear only creates fear, will be to stop him doing what he is doing. The psychological effect of it on the country as a whole will be such that prices will come down where they arc unnecessarily excessive, and I am one of those who want to get prices down to as low a level as possible. The people themselves keep prices high. The very unrest which we have in the country and the very difficulties which exist keep prices quite high enough without people having to pay profiteering prices on top of them. I therefore hope that the House will give an overwhelming majority for this Bill, because it is at least a way, and it does show on the part of the Government 30me effort to get to the bottom of this matter. If it costs £50,000, as has been mentioned this afternoon, it will be worth it, if we can find out whether it is this or that group or this or that man that is profiteering, whether it is the retailer, the middleman, the wholesale dealer, or the manufacturer. I have my own idea. I believe that the bulk of it does not rest with the
retailer or the manufacturer, but with the factory, the wholesaler, and the middleman, who is not governed and who does as he likes. I am sure those who know the manufacturers of this country will back me up when I say that they keenly resent the prices at which goods made in their factories under most difficult circumstances are sold to the retailers through these intermediaries. They wish they could get rid of them, but it is a very difficult problem indeed. Supposing the only result of this measure is to show the necessity for the abolition of the middleman if prices are to come down, the Government on that ground alone will be justified in introducing it, and I hope that I shall have the support of other Members this afternoon.

6.0 P.M.

Mr. CLYNES: I can assure my hon. Friend who has just sat down (Mr. Higham) that we on this side of the House share with him the desire to locate the profiteer and to deal with the evil of profiteering. In the remarks that I address to the House I shall endeavour, on behalf of those with whom I act. to indicate the limitations of the proposals now offered to deal with a very big and serious evil. The Government, I think, is to be congratulated at least on. one thing, and that is on having a Minister with a sufficient reserve of courage to submit proposals such as are contained in this Bill after having seen that those proposals must fall short entirely of meeting the evils with which he proposes to deal. I think the House felt, as he must have felt when be sat down, that this measure does not make. a good job of the question with which it is dealing. Almost playfully, the right hon. Gentleman assured us that this matter had been under consideration£that this Bill, the framework of its proposals, had been more or less within the keeping of the responsible heads of the Government for some months past. After listening to every word of the right hon. Gentleman's speech, I regard the Bill as no better than a half hearted device for dealing with the situation. It will be remembered that ho showed the House, in a very long statement, that there was not very much profiteering after all, that high prices must be distinguished from the profiteering that prevails, and I think he impressed the House with the conclusion that this measure, which is designed to give assurance to the consumer and to protect him against profiteering, will at least have the
effect of proving to the consumer that there is very little profiteering. I am sure that that, at any rate, in the country will not be accepted as a remedy for an evil which is felt to be very big. It is a melancholy business that the House should have to consider any such question. It is a national reproach when we reflect on the sacrifices of the soldiers and of millions of other people in recent years, people who patriotically helped their country in every way£it is, I say, a melancholy fact that we should be considering the case of people who are using by-products, and taking advantage of the circumstances of the time. to exact undue money from their fellow citizens.
The House will remember that we received in the country, and in the House as well, only a few months ago, assurances of a fall in the prices of food. The assurances were so minute that exact figures were mentioned and a certain date given when the purchasing power of the average working-class family would be increased. That forecast having found no fulfilment what ever, it should be a warning to the Government against expecting too much as the result of the measure which is now brought forward. I observe, by the way, that the name of my right hon. Friend the Food Controller is not on the back of the bill, although I see the name of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Food Ministry. I submit to the House that the Government has not treated the Food Ministry according to its deserts in face of the problem which it has had to handle. It was understood, according to the announcement of my right hon. Friend the Food Controller, that he was asked to undertake the unenviable duty of winding up his Ministry. But a little experience showed how dangerous it was to take hands off, in view of the shortage and after-war conditions which enabled the creation of an artificial rise in prices against the needs and demands of the consumer. The Food Ministry, finding itself being driven further and further into difficulties, was presented with a Select Committee to inquire not. merely as to food, but as to other articles. Yet at the beginning of the labours of that Committee we had the extraordinary spectacle of the right hon. Gentleman who has introduced this measure coming into the Committee Room and in fact telling the Committee that it is of no use for the purpose for which it was appointed and that the Government had
introduced a Bill to deal with the situation. So unprecedented and so drastic a step for a Minister to take should have a. fuller excuse than is to be found in this Bill. I say that the policy represented in this Bill has not been materially considered. If it had been we should have had a stronger measure, and one which would have offered a better solution.
Is this Bill meant to shield the consumer against the profiteer or is it merely a device to shield the Ministry against the public on account of the situation which has been created? If it were intended only as a shield for the Ministry it would not eventually succeed in its purpose. I reject the view that you could deal with this problem of prices or profiteering by such heroic measures as hanging the profiteer. You cannot settle this intricate problem in that way. There can, of course, be no settlement without very drastic measures. I have examined the question thoroughly, and I say you must either do it drastically or leave it alone. This Bill does neither the one thing nor the other. The right hon. Gentleman asserted that the Bill does deal with trusts and combines and with the big men at the top. I fail to find a single word which justifies the conclusion that either the committees or the tribunals which are to be established are given power in the Bill or under the regulations to be framed which will secure this end. The House should keep in mind the fact that all the agencies through which this Bill is to operate are to get their power not from the House of Commons but from regulations secretly framed at the Board of Trade, and unless under these powers you ensure that steps will be taken to deal with the big man at the top your Bill will be of no use. I find in the Bill no such powers to deal with that state of things, and surely it is a burlesque on legislation to ask the House through local tribunals or local inquiry committees to deal with the men at the top! No one more than my right hon. Friend opposite has laboured to bring to the attention of this House and the country the evils of the operations of trusts, and I should like to associate myself with the recommendation of the Committee on this matter for dealing with trusts.

Sir A. GEDDES: If the right hon. 'Gentleman will read the Clause he will see
that the Board of Trade may establish committees, or require, local authorities to establish committees, which will have power to report on trusts and other things.

Mr. CLYNES: I will deal with that point presently. I was about to read the recommendation of the Committee on Trusts and Combines which sat and reported on 14th April, since which, so far as I know, despite questions addressed to Ministers in this House, nothing whatever has been done to give effect to the Committee's recommendations. The Committee, by the way, stated in its conclusions that it was satisfied that trade associations and combines were rapidly increasing in this country and might within no distant period exercise a paramount control over important branches of British trade. Accordingly, the Committee recommended that it should be the duty of the Board of Trade to obtain from all available sources information as to the nature, extent and development of trusts, combines, firms, companies and agreements connected with the mining, manufacturing, trade and commercial interests, or the transport industry, with a view to the regulation of prices of commodities produced in the United Kingdom or imported into our markets, in so far as they tended to the creation of monopolies or the restraint of trade. When the Government sets a Committee to work and it works laboriously for months in dealing with certain evils and makes far-reaching recommendations its labours ought not to be set aside in this manner, nor should its conclusions be treated as though the Government had no use whatever for them. This Bill has an essential defect so far as it deals with profiteering. It deals, as a matter of fact, with the small profiteer by regulation, or by committee, or by tribunal, or by such other methods, either separately or in combination. But how is it that the Government cannot undertake to fix prices throughout from the big man down to the little trader? Surely if the intention is to deal with all, the better policy would be not to do it as this Bill proposes and to wait until some excess price has been charged or until complaint has been made, not to wait, indeed, until the offence has been committed and until wrong prices have been charged, but to start at the very beginning ! According to Clause 1 of this Bill, the Board of Trade is to have power,
through the various committees or tribunals which are to be set up, to investigate prices, costs and profits, and for that purpose to require any person to appear before them and to furnish such information and to produce such documents as they may require, and then they are to have power to declare the price which would yield a reasonable profit. I take that to mean that there will be, first, some statement of an excessive charge having been imposed, that the aggrieved per-son will report a case to a committee or a tribunal, and the grievance will be that there has been an unreasonable profit made. There will be investigation, and then the tribunal will declare what a reasonable profit should be. I am suggesting to the House that the position should be reversed, and that if it is intended to deal with the whole of the traders, from the biggest to the smallest, the Government should undertake fully the task of fixing prices throughout and not leaving to the mass of the smaller traders—who in practice will be really the victims of this Bill—to the trials and the penalties which these various local committees may impose. The right hon. Gentleman, in his evidence before the Committee, fully bore out what I said the other day. This is his language as reported in the "Times":
Questioned as to how far local tribunals would be empowered to act, the right hon. Gentleman said that they would be able to investigate the cost of a suit of clothes from the wool from Australia to the braid on the bottom of the trousers and the buttons on the waistcoast. He hoped that tribunals would also be able to pre-vent profiteering in beer.
If all those laborious duties of investigation are to be undertaken by these local tribunals—

Sir A. GEDDES: The right hon. Gentleman must look at the official copy of the evidence, and he would see there is a "not." The local tribunals would clearly not be able to investigate from the wool in Australia to the finished clothing.

Mr. CLYNES: I certainly accept that correction. I do not, however, see how it makes the Bill any better. We have practically had no statement from the right hon. Gentleman as to the agency through which investigation is to be made in regard to those bigger profiteers who are at the top. I repeat that the effect of this Bill will be to throw the weight of grievance upon the masses of the smaller trades-people and traders who come in contact
with individual consumers. Those who are dealing with trusts and combines, the great wholesalers, the big dealers, and the importers, are not the people who will make any complaint at all. They are enjoying their share of whatever profiteering is going in their realm of trade. There will be no complaint made by them. The only complaints which will be put before the local tribunals are the complaints which will arise from the aggrieved feeling of the millions of consumers who regard the shopkeepers as reaping immense profits out of these very high prices. This measure, in effect, will afford a wider measure of escape for the big profiteer than he has so far had. The Government cannot have availed themselves fully of the great ability which resides in our Government Departments to produce a better measure than this, if they themselves would make up their mind on the broad policy and determine to stamp out profiteering in scores of articles, as they have virtually stamped it out in the case of most articles of food. Ninety-four per cent. of the food which is consumed is subject to a process of price-fixing from the beginning to the end. It may be that that fixing of prices gives to some food traders a rather higher amount of profit than under the free play of competition under conditions of plenty they would enjoy, but it gives them a less amount of profit than they would be able to secure, if it is no longer entirely free, under a condition of security. There are a few men perhaps in other Ministries as well as in the Ministry of Food who could frame these schemes if the main outlines of policy were settled in the minds of the Government. Let the Government, for instance, turn to a man like Sir William Beveridge and three or four of his clerks in the Ministry of Food, and ask them to frame measures —I do not mean for consultative purposes, but within the limits of the policy to which I have referred—let them leave these men free to frame schemes on the lines of that policy, a policy which would exhibit a determination to deal with the evil which this Bill will leave totally untouched.
The right hon. Gentleman has assured the House that shortly we are to have some announcement from the Prime Minister on the removal of restrictions on trade. That is an announcement which I gladly welcome. The effect of these restrictions upon trade has been to offer special opportunities to the profiteer.
They have enabled him to carry on his work without seeming to commit any offence against his fellow citizens or against the law. With that allusion, I should like to draw the attention of the House to what I think is an act of very serious neglect on the part of the Government to deal effectively with the protests repeatedly offered by Lord Emmott, who recently resigned, together with other members of his Committee, I believe, because of the virtual packing of the Committee in the interests of certain particular trades. Lord Emmott, speaking on this very topic only a day or two ago, said:
The present system of arbitrary restrictions dictated by interested committees is the very worst form of Protection ever invented.
He concluded with a very strong denunciation of these unnatural courses which are taken to increase the scale of profits, and which consider the interests of the people as a secondary matter. Those with whom I act on this side of the House cannot regard this Bill as meeting the emergency and the national situation which profiteering has created. We know how enormous the task is. It ought not to be left merely to a Government to decide. I remember that when we had to provide munitions, and men and money had to be obtained, and when while the War was raging, we, all of us, felt that we ought to stand shoulder to shoulder for the purposes of national safety, there were repeated conferences between the representatives of the Government, sometimes represented by the Prime Minister, and great labour and business conferences. Have we come to the end of our service in respect to what these conferences can do? The country really has not been aroused to the danger which confronts it. Pictures of bankruptcy have been painted in this House. We are reminded of our losses in respect to trade and business. We know that we are living, as it were, in a state of indebtedness which before long must come down with even greater hardship upon the shoulders of the masses of the wage-earning people. I do not want those with whom I act on this question to approach a Bill like this in any party spirit or in the spirit of any class interests, but I cannot conceal my irritation that this seemingly hasty step which has been taken will result in no more than a measure which will cause the maximum of irritation and perhaps
punishment to the most innocent of the people who are engaged in the general business of shop keeping and food purveying and in the smaller avenues of providing the needs of the masses of the consumers.
The conclusion we reach is that much more drastic legislation than this will be necessary, even if during the Recess the public mind is to be reassured. No thorough remedy can be provided, short of national or international purchase of food and primary commodities, Why should the Government be ashamed of purchase if, as is alleged, it is going to fix the price—if, as is alleged, in view of grievances recorded of unreasonable profit, it is going to determine what the reasonable profit may be? The fixing of prices can be conducted with a minimum of interference, but every course suggested in this measure will afford a maximum of interference with the ordinary free play of trade in the case of all persons engaged in it. The fixing of prices and the application of control throughout is the second step essential if this grievance is to be effectively handled. As to the limiting of profits to a reasonable payment for the services of those who may act for the Government or who may only act. as importers or agents, these are days when any payment of reasonable return for services should not be permitted. The masses of the workers, in. spite of their increased wages, their advances and their bonuses, in the main are still kept at subsistence level. They have not the opportunity of conditions of shortage, up to which they have to live, to exploit the employer and to exploit the State to the same degree that the masses of the consumers can be exploited by traders.
There must be a rigid enforcement of the existing laws which are still on the Statute Book providing for a heavy fine and for imprisonment acting as deterrents against offences against the law. This House of Commons unanimously in August last agreed to a Bill which I had the honour to introduce empowering the Courts not only to fix a fine or to imprison where an offence was committed against the Regulations of the Ministry of Food, but to compel that profiteer to pay back to the State twice as much as it had been proved he had secured by any wrong prices that he had charged. It does not appear to me that full use has been made of that. I am certain that something could have been done through the offices of State to bring the various Courts of the coun-
try up to a fuller use of these Acts of Parliament, which were intended as a deterrent against the offences committed against the great masses of the consumers. I do not know whether my hon. Friends who act with me on this side of the House would prefer to have this Bill to no Bill at all, but certainly we are agreed that this measure will not touch the fringe of the evil. This is not a measure justified by the speech to which we listened this afternoon. I suggest either that the grievance should be dealt with thoroughly or left alone. You will only further incense and discontent the masses of the people by measures which, after six months' trial, will leave them more irritated and will 'leave them without a remedy in face of the evils with which they are confronted. Within that period, by administrative Acts, the Government can do a great deal, oven if it only sets to work in real earnest and in sincerity to deal with the big trusts, big importers, and traders and combines. That would go a long way to allay the public dissatisfaction. I trust that the right hon. Gentleman, after he has heard, as he will hear before this Debate is finished, views from all sides of the House which, in the main, show that this Bill is totally unworthy of the occasion and totally unsuitable to the bigger of the evils, will roach the conclusion that, even with the short time at the disposal of the Government before Parliament rises, something better than this must be attempted and something better done.

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of FOOD (Mr. McCurdy): I have listened with pleasure and gratitude to the observations of the right hon. Gentleman when he referred in terms of approval to the recommendations of the Committee on Trusts appointed by the Ministry of Reconstruction, of which for the last twelve months I have acted as Chairman. It was quite obvious that the right hon. Gentleman had fully made himself acquainted with the contents of the Report and the recommendations, and I cannot help thinking that if he had made himself as fully acquainted with the provisions of the Bill he would not have been led into making many of what I must characterise as mistaken criticisms of the measure. I was one of those who were consulted in the initial stages when the Bill was being framed, and the reason why I backed it and why it has given me the greatest possible satisfaction, to support it is because, in my judgment, it is intended to carry out
the main recommendations of the Committee. I am quite sure this Bill is undoubtedly necessary. I have been spending the last week in Liverpool, where the air has been full of strikes and rumours of strikes, and no one can move in a disturbed area of that kind and endeavour to make himself acquainted with the causes which underlie these startling manifestations of industrial unrest without realising that a deep sense of indignation against what is regarded as profiteering is one of the most effective causes which are retarding the restoration of industrial efficiency. It is necessary that an attempt should be made to grapple with what is by some people regarded as an admitted evil and which is certainly regarded as a very serious evil by the great mass of the people. Under these circumstances there have, of course, been various suggestions as to the best course to adopt and I was interested very much in the suggestion of the hon. Gentleman (Sir W. Rutherford) and his remedy for the present inflated prices, and the general distrust with regard to what are believed to be the unfair operations of profiteering. He said the remedy was to remove all forms of control and the restrictions which have been imposed upon trade and commerce for the purposes of the War. Restore freedom of competition, let natural economic factors have free play, and the result will presently be to lower prices. The experience of the Committee on Trusts leads me, and led the members of the Committee, who represented very diverse interests—there were trade unionists, there were captains of industry, and there were even Labour Leaders like Mr. Sidney Webb—and we were quite unanimous to the conclusion that whatever remedy there may be for the high prices which have grown up during the War, you must not look to the restoration of free competition as the remedy, because we are living in a transitional era in which free competition as an effective factor for the regulation of world prices is ceasing to exist. We talk of Free Trade and free competition, but in the sense in which those words were used by Adam Smith and Victorian economists, Free Trade and free competition have ceased to exist. The choice to-day is not between control and de-control. The only choice is by whom control is to be exercised. As a factor in determining prices competition has been, and is being, rapidly replaced by combination. Prices are no longer fixed by the play of the
forces of supply and demand and by the anxiety of rival traders to see who can sell the cheapest They are fixed by a combination of traders deciding who can sell the dearest. Not only is that a theoretical view, but it is a view of the truth of which we had the strongest possible confirmation at the Ministry of Food when, in response to some extent to the advice of gentlemen who hold that view, that the right thing to do is to sweep away control, we commenced some months ago, tentatively, a policy of de-control as regards foodstuffs. I will give one example. We were in possession of large stocks of oils and fats. It was suggested that we were holding them up for fear that we might incur a loss on their realisation. We embarked on a policy of de-control. We disposed of our stocks, and within a month the price of oils and fats has risen by leaps and bounds to more than double the price under control, and we had to consider what expedient we could find for undoing the mischief.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: Were not great quantities of oils sent over to Germany in bulk, and did not that put the price up?

Mr. McCURDY: No. We made very careful investigation into the causes of the rise, and I do not think exports to Ger-many were a substantial factor. The problem is control or de-control. It is a remarkable fact that while during the last twenty years this process of trustification, this growth of trade combines has proceeded with ever accelerating speed—and the speed has accelerated very consider-ably during the years of the War—up to the present this country alone has been in the position of having no legislation which would either enable a Government Department, or throw upon any Department of Government, the duty to act as a watchdog in the public interest for the purpose of watching the course of prices in the interests of the consumer and of ascertaining what were the factors which were operating to the detriment of the public, and therefore the Committee on Trusts recommended—and this was the whole sum and substance of their recommendations—that it should be made the duty of the Board of Trade periodically and continuously to conduct an investigation into price movements and the operations of trade combines and trusts, in the interests of the public, and realising that
that would in some cases involve prolonged expert investigations, we also recommended that there should be constituted some tribunal from which the Board of Trade might really have assistance in the investigation of these matters. In a word, what we proposed was that in dealing with this problem of the trusts and the trade combines, which, as hon. Members seem to be agreed, is intimately linked up with the question of the profiteer—for, after all, the profit that is taken by the small retail shopkeeper on individual transactions is a small matter compared with the toll taken by great combines like the Meat Trust, which controls so large a proportion of imported meats. The first step was to set up machinery which should really ascertain the facts. First find out your facts and then make them known, and when the facts had been ascertained and were known then it would be time to say, as regards this trade or that, what is wanted is to fix prices, or what is wanted is to take over the importation and to purchase the supplies, or what is wanted is to prevent speculation by licensing traders. That is precisely the machinery which this Bill sets up. The only difference between this Bill and the recommendations of the Committee on Trusts is that while they extend to all articles of commerce, this Bill is intended to be directed to those articles of commerce with regard to which there is alleged to be profiteering. This is a Bill to deal immediately with an immediate evil, and to set up the minimum machinery that is necessary for that purpose. Clause I says "the Board of Trade is empowered to investigate prices, costs, and profit with regard to all articles with regard to which there is any allegation of profiteering at present."

HON. MEMBERS: The Select Committee.

Mr. McCURDY: If my right hon. Friend thinks his Select Committee was competent to do that I congratulate him on its composition. I sat upon the Committee for eighteen months, and we examined witnesses for the whole of that period and we came to the conclusion that without something like judicial powers and without abundant time at our disposal it would be farcical for any committee to attempt to institute a scientific investigation into costings, prices, and profits, and with the utmost possible respect for the Select Committee of the
House of Commons, it was never set up for the purpose of conducting a scientific investigation of that kind. The process of investigation which is contemplated in this Bill is not that of a Committee seeking about for some general principle of policy. What is intended under this Bill is a machinery of investigation which will be really capable of handling in a businesslike and scientific way problems which are intensely complicated and which require very painstaking investigation if they are to be fairly and properly treated.

Mr. KENNEDY JONES: Where are the people who will compose these committees to be obtained from?

Mr. McCURDY: I should hope, and certainly contemplate, from the best business brains of this country.

Mr. JONES: Whitehall?

Mr. McCURDY: The Bill says nothing about Whitehall.

Mr. JONES: The Board of Trade?

Mr. McCURDY: May I be allowed to continue? It is a mistake to suggest that that is in any way limited to retail prices of articles. On the contrary, the Bill is clear and explicit on that point. It is their business to investigate any complaints of unreasonable profits which are made on the sale of any articles, whether wholesale or retail.

Lord ROBERT CECIL: Sub-section (a).

Mr. McCURDY: Sub-section (a) gives powers to the Board of Trade to investigate prices and costs and profits. Sub-section (b) says that they can receive and investigate complaints that profits are unreasonable. Upon any complaint of that kind being made, they may declare the price which would afford a reasonable profit. That is obviously a power that should be set up; a power to declare a standard of prices in regard to the wholesale as well as the retail price of any article as to which there is public complaint made and which is investigated under that Section.

Mr. CLYNES: The hon. Gentleman is leading the point without dealing with a point which I should like to press. The only complaints that will be made to any local tribunal will be made by individually aggrieved consumers. It is amongst the mass of consumers that grievances about
profiteering are now felt. My point is that those who deal directly with trusts and with big trading companies and combines are themselves, so to speak, in the swim, and they will make no report of any grievance against anybody. That is a point which is not cleared up.

Mr. McCURDY: Up to the present I have been dealing with Section 1, and I have not yet come to the Section which refers to the local tribunals. Therefore, the criticism of the right hon. Gentleman is at least premature. I was going on to deal with Section 2, in which the local tribunal arises. Section 2 does not appear to have received at the hands of my right hon. Friend that close consideration which would, I think, have removed some misconception from his mind. The object of Section 2 is that the Board of Trade, faced with the necessity of conducting investigations, which, if they are to do justice, may require considerable time and considerable attention by expert testimony, are empowered to establish committees, to whom they may delegate all or any of their powers. The committees are not in any way restricted to local committees. Although I do not represent the Board of Trade, and have no authority to say what is in the mind of the Board of Trade, surely the reason why some delegation of powers to local committees is put in the Bill is obvious. While the central committees, composed of the best business brains which the country may afford, and which may be sitting in Manchester, Liverpool, or Glasgow, not necessarily in Whitehall, may be investigating on behalf of the Board of Trade such things as the operations of a milk combine or a meat trust, or the vexed question of whether it is profiteering or freight charges or unsatisfactory market arrangements that are responsible for the loss of food which is not marketed in time in some of the great central markets—while the national or central committees may be investigating these questions so far as they are concerned in the great centres of commerce, the small matters, which are nevertheless of great interest to small people, and of great interest to poor people, as to whether the retailer is following the example of his betters, or is blameless in respect of charges made against him, may be properly referred to the local committee on the spot. It is entirely within the discretion of the Board of Trade to what extent the powers are to be referred to local
committees. Why anybody should assume that the Board of Trade would exercise that discretion unreasonably and leave to local committees matters which obviously ought to be determined toy the central board, or vice versâ, would throw a burden on the national committees with regard to small matters which could properly be referred, at least for investigation and report, to the local committees, I do not understand.
This is the policy of the Government. First of all, we create machinery which will enable us for the first time in the history of this country, and which will give us the only machinery we have ever had, to investigate the operations, not merely of the retail shopkeeper, but the operations of the big business concerns, and of the trade combines and of the trusts. This Bill creates machinery which can be enlarged and expanded so that there need be no unnecessary delay in the investigation of complaints, however numerous, provided, of course, that there is some primâ facie case made out, so that the time of the tribunal is not wasted by considering frivolous or unimportant complaints.

Mr. JONES: What will enable you to declare the price which is reasonably proper?

Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member should not interrupt. He was listened to in absolute silence, and it is not fair to hon. Members that he should make these repeated interjections.

Mr. McCURDY: I hope I have satisfied the House as to the comprehensive machinery for investigating the facts. The next thing is to make the facts public. I believe that among the remedies for profiteering, by no means the least important is publicity itself. Sometimes a proper investigation of the facts will disclose as their sequel that there was no profiteering at all. If the only results of the Bill were—I am afraid it is not likely to be—to satisfy the people of this country that their belief in profiteering was a mistake, and that they were not being robbed and swindled as some of them think they are, a useful service would have been performed. The result of some investigations will be to dispel fears which are proved to be erroneous and proved to be unfounded, while in other cases investigation will disclose facts to enable us to say what kind of remedy we are going to apply. To talk
as some people do about fixing prices or removing control or any general specific of that kind is what the gentlemen of the medical profession would call pure quackery. You have to diagnose the complaint first, and what is the remedy for excessive prices in one commodity is not necessarily the remedy for excessive prices in another commodity. I fit is speculation, the remedy may be the licensing of trade so as to eliminate all the unnecessary middlemen who have introduced themselves for the purpose of inflating profits to fill their own pockets. Therefore, in all cases the facts must be ascertained before we can apply the remedy. The Act takes powers to fix penalties when profiteering takes place. There has been a good deal said by right hon. Gentlemen to the effect that this Bill imposes penalties for an offence which is not defined. I should have thought that whatever criticism could be levelled at the Bill it was not open to that criticism.
The offence is defined. The offence is selling articles, whether wholesale or retail, at an unreasonable price. The criticism which is made is that this is not a sufficiently exact definition. I looked into the Library before I came into the House to refresh my memory as to the extent to which definitions of that kind form part of the structure of everyday English law. There is not a day or an hour that passes without tribunals being called upon to decide the simple question as to whether an Act is a reasonable or unreasonable Act. If it is a matter of railway and canal charges, the Act says that they must be fairly reasonable, and a tribunal is fully competent to determine that. If it is a question of the conditions under which transit has to take place on our railways, the Act says that they must be fairly reasonable, and a tribunal has to determine that. There is a Cheap Trains Act which provides, as regards the working people, that fares must be fair and reasonable. The tribunals have never found any difficulty in interpreting that. There is probably never an Assize held at the Old Bailey at which the life or death of some fellow-subject of the British Crown does not depend upon the simple answer given by the jury to the question as to whether the act was the act of a reasonable man under the circumstances. There is the question of manslaughter, the question of negligence, whether the negligence is culpable or not. Reasonable care, reasonable compensation, reasonable dili-
gence, reasonable expenditure, reasonable cost, reasonable charges, reasonable fares—the whole structure of English law is full of problems the solution of which depends upon the view which the jury takes as to whether a fellow-citizen has acted reasonably or unreasonably.
If the tribunal appointed by this Bill for the purpose is competent to determine whether a man is making unreasonable profit at the expense of his fellows, I am afraid the people of this country would lose patience with the law and they might produce a much more summary and much less satisfactory method of determining whether a retailer was or was not making reasonable or unreasonable profit, and act accordingly. The powers conferred by this Bill are not, as the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Clynes) seemed to suggest, in derogation of any of the powers of the Ministry of Food. The powers of the Ministry of Food remain untouched. So far as this Bill is concerned, it is not anticipated that food will come within its purview at all. It will only come under its purview if, in the view of the Food Controller, it is desirable that his powers should be strengthened by the powers contained, in this Bill. The powers in this Bill are additional to the existing powers, whether in the Food Ministry or any other Department of State. They are in addition to the powers under which thousands of prosecutions have taken place in the present year against people who have been guilty of offences against the regulations laid down for the protection of the public in respect of prices by the Ministry of Food. I trust my right hon. Friend will once more read the Bill, and I trust he will find, as I have found, that the Bill does, in fact, carryout the spirit and intentions of the recommendations of the Committee on Trusts, and does afford a very satisfactory framework upon which we might commence the great problem which will have to be faced in this country, as they are facing it in America, of dealing with these trade combines and trusts which, if the control of the Government is removed, are always ready to step in and control prices for us.

7.0 P.M.

Mr. G. THORNE: I trust the House will permit me to approach this matter from a somewhat different standpoint from that on which it has been discussed already, by reason of the fact that I am a member of the Select Committee which has been so considering it. In the first place, in criticising
this measure, I am relieved of any odium which might attach to the suggestion that my interests would be prejudicially affected by a Bill such as this. I have already heard it said, on the contrary, that this Bill will be a lawyers' endowment Bill, and I think that some solicitors are already beginning to say that, at last, the Prime Minister is going to do a good turn to his own profession. Consequently, I approach it purely from a public standpoint, and my sole anxiety is to take my share as a Member of the House of Commons in assisting my colleagues and the Government in doing what is, I agree, vitally necessary to be done at the present juncture in the interests of the people as a whole. In doing so I desire to recall that on the intervention in the Committee of the right hon. Gentleman who has just left the House, when I ventured to express my surprise at what he had to say I was called to task publicly for so doing, because it was thought absurd to express surprise at anything which the present Government might do. Therefore the situation, so far as I can understand it, is this, that we have not got any Government in the ordinary accepted interpretation of the word; it is more like a bureaucratic junta. We are governed by Departments, and one day one Department seems to have power and another day another Department seems to have power, and in the oscillation of the Departments we do not know which is supreme.
That, to my mind, explains the extraordinary situation presented to us during the course of the last few days. Only two or three days ago this Select Committee was appointed with a definite purpose. That was to inquire into the cost of the various articles of ordinary consumption and how far that cost was due to excessive prices. That Committee committed a fatal offence. I suppose that it was not expected to be done. I presume that it was thought that it was going to be a tame Committee, but I am glad to say that all its members from the very moment they were called together were an independent Committee. They realised the responsibility of their task, and they did what I believe the Government ought to have done long ago; they made the proceedings public, and I have far more hope from a public inquiry into the facts of the situation than I have from the private inquiry which this Bill is going to produce. That is the supreme issue between myself and the Government. I want to help the
Government. This profiteering has got to stop somehow. High prices have got to be lowered. If I could think that passing this Bill would do that, I would support the measure earnestly, but because I believe that it is a sham measure and that instead of effecting this end it is going to give the people a false conception, I consider it to be dangerous rather than helpful.
The right hon. Gentleman apparently was unaware of the appointment of the Committee. Even Jove nods. [HON. MEMBERS: "Homer."] Well, Homer too, and in a lucid interval the Government for once did a sensible thing. It appointed an independent Committee to inquire into facts vital to the welfare of the people, but when the right hon. Gentleman came to the Committee and gave us to understand, after having only one day for a public inquiry, that our services were not required any longer it looked as though we had been suddenly killed by cruel and unnatural parents, and the suggestion was made at the time that we ought at once to put up as an appropriate epitaph:
If so soon to be done for,
What were we begun for?
But I am thankful to say that, before accepting that position, the Committee realised that its parents were the House of Commons, that the Committee owed a responsibility to the House of Commons, and it came to the conclusion that it would not allow itself to commit the happy dispatch but would keep itself in existence to render what service it could both to the nation and to the House, and, having decided to take all its evidence in public, I am not at all surprised that the right hon. Gentleman, who seems to be constantly the guardian of locked boxes, did not like an inquiry which faced the facts in the light of day. I am satisfied that that is the only hope with which we can really face the responsibility of the present position. We are bound to do something. The danger is, as the Prime Minister said the other day in regard to Ireland, lest we do something which is foolish. The important thing, therefore, is to consider how we can best face the situation, and I ask that this Committee may be allowed to continue its operations, that it may have full power and authority given to it, and that it may in public ascertain the
facts without which people cannot come to any conclusion as to the course which they should pursue.
I had intended to address myself to the various points in the Bill, but they have been so fully referred to that I should be only saying them over again. The point which I am trying to urge is this, following on what has already been said, that the Bill will not achieve the objects expressed and desired. It may catch a few unfortunate small traders; it may frighten a large number of traders, which is not quite the way for a Government to act. It will harass all the traders and it will disturb the whole conditions of trade in this country, and while we know, and the right hon. Gentleman admits, that it will do harm, the point is whether it will do a compensating amount of good. The Bill is different from what I anticipated it would be. When I heard the right hon. Gentleman before the Committee I thought that the Bill was primarily for the purpose of punishment. Now apparently the policy is to inquire. I ask him, if so, why be has not inquired already. Why have the details of these things not been investigated before? The difficulty has been going on for months past. The Food Controller has been inquiring all these months, and, whether he has taken the right course or the wrong course, he has been investigating the facts and trying to realise the situation, but, so far as this question relates to the Board of Trade, which has so heavy responsibilities upon its shoulders, it has not been investigated at all, and the Board of Trade only comes on the scene now to get the powers which it ought to have got, if it needed it, many months ago so as not to leave this merely to a rushed proposal at the end of the Session. The Government has gone the wrong way about the business. It ought to have made these inquiries before it proposed this Bill. It ought to have undertaken these investigations in the same way that the Food Department has done, and then if it found it vitally necessary at last to setup an inquiry the tribunal should be one that the people could trust in. The Board of Trade is suspect itself. The people of the country believe that the Government Departments have been the worst profiteers of the whole lot, and consequently they urge a public independent inquiry which looks all the facts in the face, which is independent of the Government, independent of Departments
and of all the varying interests, so that the public may realise that their interests are being regarded by an absolutely independent Committee or body.
If the Government had proposed instead of this Bill such an independent public inquiry I could have understood it. It has done nothing of the kind. It has simply postponed that, because the first sub-Clause of the Bill is to investigate, and the second is to prosecute, and I put the question: Can you act on the second sub-Clause before you have completed the operation of the first? You have got to investigate before you prosecute. If you have got to do that, then many months have got to elapse before this Bill can be put into operation. I conceive that the Government has not treated this House fairly on these great issues so materially affecting the people. It ought to have been more open. It ought to have taken these things into consideration long ago, and when it was able to publish the facts then would be the time to produce this Bill for the prosecution and punishment of offenders. I recognise the difficulties to the full, I want to punish profiteers as much as the right hon. Gentleman himself does. My sole difficulty is lest the Bill should do harm instead of good. But the responsibility for the Bill rests on the Government. It has taken this course. I am not certain whether tribunals are the proper machinery to set up, but if tribunals are established they ought to be absolutely independent bodies, so that people may realise that that which is so vital to their welfare is at last being secured in the public interest. That is the ground of my opposition to this measure. I hope earnestly before we are through with it that the Government will so alter its terms as to make it more in accord with what is necessary in the public interest. If it does that, then there will be a very different attitude towards it from that which exists at the present moment.

Major GREAME: I would much rather have given a silent vote on this Bill, but having been a member of the same Committee as the hon. Member who last spoke, and having heard whatever evidence was given, I think it incumbent on members of the Committee to give the House such assistance as they can. It is very easy to make a speech which merely laughs this Bill out of court, but we have reached the stage at which it is generally admitted that there is a very
serious amount of profiteering. I am perfectly satisfied with the evidence of that. I am satisfied that there is very consider-able profiteering among retailers. The experience of the Ilford market and the reduction of prices which has taken place there shows that there is profiteering in that quarter. I had a letter myself this morning from someone who told me that having asked a tailor—it was not in my own Constituency, so I do not mind quoting it—to supply him with some cloth. The tailor said he was unable to do so, but he would certainly get some. He procured the cloth and charged 30s. a yard for it. But in sending it along, unfortunately for himself, he left in the parcel the invoice from the wholesaler, which showed that the cloth had been invoiced to the tailor at 18s. 6d. a yard. He, therefore, charged 60 per cent. profit on a transaction on which there was no risk. I think incidents of that kind are quite clearly profiteering. He made the matter more serious by offering 7s. 6d. to have the wholesaler's invoice returned to him. I am also completely satisfied, and I think the House is, that there is a considerable amount of profiteering by speculators, who come into businesses, and also that there are thoroughly unreasonable profits being made at, I dare say, every stage of the proceedings.
Having reached these conclusions near the end of the Session is it not incumbent on this House before it adjourns for the Recess to take some action? I do not feel that Members are entitled merely to offer destructive criticisms of this Bill. Of course, I can quite understand the attitude of the hon. Member who seconded the rejection of the Bill. If I understood him right he said that whatever the evils might be the remedy to be adopted by the Government was simple; that there was no remedy except to return to the free course of trade. I am not sure what he meant by that, but as he is one of the hon. Members for Liverpool I gather it was something different from Free Trade. If any hon. Member feels that there is no remedy, and that we have simply to leave things as they are, and to trust to their getting better, that is an attitude which I can understand; but that hon. Member ought in consistency to have voted against every system of control and against the whole of the food control as it exists now. As a matter of fact he is absolutely wrong upon his facts. No sooner were the restrictions removed than
prices leaped up again and restrictions had to be reimposed. I think you must have a considerable measure of control, that you must have local control and central control concurrently, if you are to get the best results. I do not believe that central control and the central fixing of prices are enough by themselves. It is cumbersome, it is slow; it is necessary in some cases, but in other cases it is quite impracticable. It means, of course, the fixing of prices at every stage; hence delay. It means fixing a mean level, which undoubtedly at present is giving an unduly large rate of profit to a large number of traders. It is wholly inapplicable in cases where conditions vary between place and place and rapidly from time to time, as in the case of greengroceries, in which there is the most gross profiteering at the present time. I think, therefore, that there ought to be local powers as well as central powers for fixing prices; but the Government must continue the central control, because the local fixing can only check unnecessary profit which is being made by the retailer. On the difficulty of defining an undue profit, one is reminded of what was said of the difficulty of distinction between night and day. It may not be very easy to draw a precise distinction and to say where the one begins and the other ends, but the difference between the two is tolerably obvious. I do not think we ought to give up efforts to deal with this proposition because it is difficult on the border-line to assess what is undue profit. The Government must continue the fixing of prices at the various stages, because in that way only will we be able to avoid the intervention of unnecessary middlemen into trade, and only so will we be able to reduce the cost of the article as it comes to the retailer.
Is it not the duty of any Member faced with this position to ask himself whether, this evil having to be met, it is not incumbent on him to give this Bill a Second Reading now, to go into the question with the greatest possible detail in Committee, and in Committee to give the Government all the constructive criticism possible in order to get the right type of Bill? Some older Parliamentarians may make the point that we shall so change the Bill in Committee as to make it a Bill quite different from that now before us. It is too late in the Session to take fine points of that kind. Surely what we have to do
is to get an efficient Bill and to get it now. It is sometimes said that you will get hard cases among retailers if you pass this Bill, even with proper Amendment. My answer is that if you do not pass the Bill and make an attempt to check profiteering before the House rises you twill get far more hard cases among consumers. An hon. Member on the Front Bench opposite said it was an outrageous thing for the Government to introduce the Bill now, and that they had been too slow in bringing it forward. I am not sure that it altogether lies with the lesser Liberal party to challenge the Government on that point. I think that they have not made the course of the Government very much easier in the past. They clamoured for the removal of restrictions, and now they clamour for the restrictions to be put on again. I am not concerned to defend the Government. Perhaps they have been slow; perhaps they ought to have done this sooner. I think they ought, but surely that is a poor reason for not getting on with this Bill at the eleventh hour.
There are some points on which I hope the Government will throw a little more light. I think we have got to make this Bill as definite and as clear upon the face of it as we possibly can. The House, I feel sure, will be averse from leaving matters to be dealt with by Regulation, especially if Regulations are to be passed at a time when the House will not be here to deal with them. I think a great deal more detail will have to be put into this Bill in Committee so that the House and the traders may know what the intentions of the Government are. I think it ought to be stated clearly in a Schedule to the Bill what are the articles to which it applies. They are susceptible of a perfectly clear definition. Every trader will then know where he stands. Secondly, I want to know, with precision, what are the powers which the Board of Trade is going to devolve upon the local authorities. That is extraordinarily important. At the present moment the whole of the powers of the Board of Trade could be devolved upon any local authority. I should like, as an alternative, to see the local authorities, where local committees are established, given powers to fix generally local retail prices, as well as to deal with specific cases as they come up. Then I want, also, to know what is to be the constitution of these local committees? That ought to be clearly stated in the Bill. For instance, I want to know whether women
are to be given representation on these local committees? Is it not possible instead of setting up some wholly new tribunal to take the local Food Committees, which are already acquainted with the work, and have done excellent work in the past, and to expand those Food Committees so as to make them competent to deal with the other articles which are to be brought within the purview of the committees?
Finally, there is one point which has not yet been touched on. The President of the Board of Trade is going to take powers to prevent frivolous complaint. The one thing the trader is afraid of, and that, he wishes to be safeguarded against, is the making of frivolous complaints. I do not believe he wants to be safeguarded against reasonable inquiry. I should like to have set out in the Bill what are the provisions by which the Government propose to stop frivolous complaints being brought, instead of leaving the whole thing to be dealt with by Regulations at a later date. In all these cases the Government must know what their own intentions are. It is due to the House and the trading community that these provisions should be put into the Bill. Some sneers have been made upon what is a most valuable provision in the Bill—the power during the six months for local authorities, if necessary, to engage in buying and selling. We have already had an experience of it, and it has proved a very effective way of bringing prices down. I am not in the least afraid of the suggestion that it would mean embarking on municipal trading on an enormous scale. This is a six-months' Bill. I hope, incidentally, that one provision, upon which the Food Controller laid great stress when he was giving evidence before the Select Committee, is going to be carried out, and that is that where the local authority does engage in buying and selling, its activities will be completely self-supporting, and that no part will be a charge upon the rates. I think that is an essential point, because if subsidies are to be given on the price of commodities it is necessary that those subsidies should be as few as possible and should be charged directly upon the Exchequer and answered for in this House, and that we should not let the local authorities have a wide discretion in this respect.
For all those reasons I think that, having arrived at the position in which we are, it is incumbent upon any Member of this
House who feels that profiteering must be dealt with, both in the retail and other stages, to vote in favour of this Bill and to direct his attention to making it a better Bill in Committee, so that the Government may be armed with the best powers. I feel that anyone who speaks in support of this Bill ought not to do so without expressing the warning that this Bill is not going to reduce prices all round. I think we should be very careful to avoid any suggestion that the Bill is going to do more than it actually will do. There is, I believe, profiteering at several stages in many articles, and I believe that an improvement can be obtained. But there arc many other things which go to govern the cost of price to-day. There is the whole question of exchange. The American exchange for instance, cannot fall 30 or 40 cents without adding a corresponding difference on to every pound of bacon we buy in the United States, and so with many things. It is just as well that the public should know that, and, above all, that the thing which is adding most to the cost of living at the present time is simply that we are producing less, and, consequently, are producing at a far higher price. Although I am in favour of passing a Bill of this kind, it is the duty of everybody to make it clear, in season and out of season, in the country, that the only sovereign remedy which can reduce the cost of living in this country is that the rich people should be a, great deal less extravagant in much of their expenditure, and that every class of the community should work a great deal harder than they are doing at present.

Mr. WOOLCOCK: I have noticed with a great deal of pleasure, and, I must confess, with some degree of comfort, the indulgence which the House extends to anyone who addresses it for the first time, and I ask for that indulgence. There seems to be a general consensus of opinion that there is profiteering at the present time, even if we are unable to define it in any closer language than that used by the President of the Board of Trade, or to say exactly what we mean by profiteering. I think one has only to look around and to judge from one's own experience, and whether it is a question of the prosperity of those who deal in wines or spirits, or whether it is a question as illustrated by my hon. Friend of various other commodities with which we are familiar, there is agreement that profiteer-
ing is going on. The extent of that profiteering has yet to be defined, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman who spoke from the Front Bench opposite, or any other member of the Select Committee, will not allow any sense of pique or any feeling whatever other than the most patriotic feeling, to induce him in any way to slacken his efforts on that particular Committee. I for one, as an individual member, feel that there must be work for that Committee corresponding with the work which must go on under the Bill.
It need not be a very large amount in profiteering to cause a great deal of unrest. At the present time, when the nation's nerves are on edge, and when we have been through a strain that we have not suffered for centuries, there is naturally a feeling of irritability all round, and the House is familiar with the very small thing which causes the greatest irritation. I do not care whether it is the price of a reel of cotton, which affects every working man's house in the country, or whether it is the even more horrible instance which was brought to the notice of the House, by way of question and answer only a little time ago, namely, that of the sale of one inch of ribbon to a discharged soldier, a man who fought in the War, at the price of a shilling, whatever it is, it is capable of causing the greatest unrest. I think it is well to recognise that what we described as profiteering does not in some cases arise from an immoral desire to grab a larger portion of this world's goods than one is entitled to. I think behind it all, in some cases, at any rate, you have the feeling that it is necessary to make as large a profit as possible against certain dark eventualities which people who keep shops see somewhere in the background. They are not clear what the future has in store for them, and there is this tendency to provide against an unknown future in the form of an insurance. It is very bad. It is bad from the national point of view because it only goes to help to create a very vicious circle. You have prices going up, and thereby the necessity for an increase in wages, and you have the circle going round until we reach a place where we find that it is absolutely impossible to continue.
I, therefore, welcome this Bill very much, and personally I should have given it higher priority than the Government have seen fit to do. In any case, one wel-
comes the Bill, even at the present stage, because it does deal with something which it is necessary to deal with in the process of reconstruction. The President of the Board of Trade described it as a rough-and-ready method, and it certainly is. I think the criticism will also be levelled against it that it sets an example of legislation by reference, as certain powers are given to the Board of Trade to make regulations. I personally at this stage of our proceedings am quite prepared to accept in this case that form of legislation. I see nothing else that can be done. With the congestion of business in the House it is impossible to contemplate the House sitting down to consider a Bill which might contain seventy or eighty or ninety Clauses, which you would require if you were going to deal with every detail of profiteering legislation. I believe that the mere passing of the Bill will do a good deal. T disagree with some of my pessimistic friends who think that it will not have that effect. I can hardly understand why my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey (Mr. Kennedy Jones) takes that point of view. It must be within the knowledge of the House that as soon as my hon. Friend got into the chair of the Committee set up to deal with transport facilities in London, the transport improved at once, and buses were more numerous. I see no reason whatever why the passing of this Bill would not to a very large measure place some restriction on the indiscriminate profiteering, and the thoughtless profiteering in some cases, which is going on at present. The details will have to be hammered out in Committee. The two main principles, those which give the Board of Trade permission to establish municipal markets and to set up tribunals, and certainly that as to the establishment of the markets, will, I believe, meet with very gratifying response from the country generally, because my experience, speaking for my own constituents, is that if there is one thing they are convinced of, it is that municipal markets are the practical remedy for profiteering at present. I should like to refer to Clause (1, a), which gives power to the Board of Trade to investigate prices and costs, and for that purpose to requisition any persons, papers, and so forth. It is quite obvious by this wording that the Government have at-tempted to utilise the system of costs investigation which saved the country during the War so many hundreds of
millions of money. But I would point out that it would be impossible for the Government to expect quite the same result from that system unless they are prepared to adapt it to present-day conditions. We must not forget that during war time the Government controlled the supply of material and labour also to a very large extent. That does not apply to anything like the same degree at the present time. Cost investigation is an ideal remedy when you have the supply within your own hands. It is a practical proposition when the State is to all intents and purposes the great consumer, and the supply of labour and material is within its own control. But when the raw material passes through many hands right up to the finished article, and is absolutely free, then it is not quite as simple in its application. Again, if we attempt in any way to stereotype the cost of production we are going to have rather serious difficulty. The effect of stereotyping any particular article of production is that you remove any incentive. You remove the incentive to produce either a somewhat better article or a cheaper article, and undoubtedly, with a costing system, what will happen will be that the manufacturer will produce the most expensive article he can possibly provide, because that, from his point of view, will be the best. In the present-day conditions of business in this country we have got to do with something which in many instances is second best.
I therefore hope that the House will regard this Bill in the light of gaining experience. It has been pointed out that this Bill only runs for six months. I am glad of it. I think that should help to a very large extent those Members who for various reasons are a little timid about the Bill in making up their minds to support it and give it a chance. When we speak in this House of profiteering I think we have something more in our minds than the punishment of those who make unreasonable profits, and that what we really mean when we say we want to do away with profiteering is rather this: We want to obtain a permanent reduction of prices. We require that quite as much as we require the punishment of offenders. This can only be done by, in the first place, an increase in production, and, in the second place, a revival of competition and also the reduction of cost. As far as I can see—and this is my main criticism of the Bill—this is not met very well in the Bill. I would respectfully ask the President
whether he has considered the possibility of dealing with this matter in such a way that the remedy would at the same time stimulate production and reduce cost. I put it to him that it might be possible to make an Order which would be applicable to various items which he may find it necessary to deal with. That Order should limit the rate of profit on the particular article per ton or per thousand or per dozen, as the case may be, to that which obtained during the pre-war period, plus a percentage which would have to be put on to make up the difference in the purchasing power of the sovereign and the additional cost of labour.
In that way there would be an incentive to increase the quantity of the goods, because then it is only by increasing the quantity that the trader could make more profit. You would, therefore, have the point I ventured to put in regard to the increase of production. Then it would tend to decrease the cost of production, because you would have competition coming in, and the manufacturer would have the tendency to decrease the cost wherever he could in order that he might compete with the lower prices, because he must secure a larger turnover. A further advantage of this Order is that it could be made at once. There are one or two matters which would have to be dealt with. Of course, it would be impossible to deal with articles that were not made before the War, and I am happy to say that there are a number now being made in this country that were not made before the War, and the method I have suggested would not apply to them, but it should be possible, either by reason of the class in which the articles are, or by some other method which, I am sure, could be thought out, to fix them in that particular way. With the greatest respect, I offer that suggestion, which may be worthy of the examination of my right hon. Friend, and I thank the House for their indulgence.

Mr. PERRING: Several hon. Members who have addressed the House seem to be under some misconception in regard to the provisions of this Bill, and the Undersecretary on the Front Bench seemed to stray, I think, in the same direction. He referred to the meat trusts and the milk combines, and so forth, but, as I understand the Bill, it does not apply to controlled articles. I think that point should be made very clear, because otherwise we are apt to speak outside the Bill. The
last paragraph of Clause 1 says that the Act does not apply to any article which is from time to time declared to be a controlled article. That being so, and knowing from the evidence of the Minister of Food before the Committee last week that some 80 per cent. or 85 per cent. of the food is controlled, and having regard to his own statement that there is no profiteering or high prices in food—I do not quite accept that myself, but it is the statement of the Government mouthpiece—I cannot understand some of the criticisms and the agitation that has been made about the high price of food. But I propose to confine myself closely to what is really in the Bill. An hon. Member just now spoke of the Bill as if it controlled prices stage by stage, in the process of manufacture, but as I understand the Bill it does nothing of the kind. The offence under the Bill, and the kernel of the Bill, is that you must not make an unreasonable profit; but, speaking as a manufacturer. I know this, that this Bill will permit per-sons to sell at an unreasonable price, although probably they may not make an unreasonable profit. The difference in the method of manufacture, the difference in the process of costing and how the cost is made up, the difference in the administration or the efficiency, the difference in the capital at the disposal of the firm, the question of the turnover of the firm, or the question of getting every ounce out of their factory and every inch of floor-space producing what it ought to produce, consistent with the Factory Acts, all these things have to be considered in arriving at what is a just and reasonable profit—not, be it noted, a just and reasonable price—and the effect of this Bill will be that if firms who are to-day producing at the very lowest cost are compelled to sell at the very lowest price, you would have to shut up everybody else who could not produce at the same price. That is the logical conclusion. If you had all trusts they could all be regulated quite easily, but when you have twenty or thirty or forty manufacturers in a given trade and the different manufacturers arriving at their costs by different processes, it must necessarily follow that you have a different price and that a firm must make a different profit, and it is because people make different profits that one firm fails and another profits—that one firm pays excess war profits and that another pays a modest profit.
Practically, what this Bill does is to penalise the firms who, by high concentration and efficient administration, have produced goods at the minimum price, and to exemplify what I mean I will refer to the evidence given by the Minister of Food before the Commission last week. He referred to an efficient bakery turning a sack of flour into loaves, and he said that one efficient firm could do it for 10s., and that another firm would require 30s. or 35s., and he struck the mean figure of 23s. Either he did a great injustice to the firm who said they wanted 35s. to convert a sack of flour into bread or he passed an unreasonable profit to the firm who could produce it for 10s. Apply the same argument to any other trade. The effect would be to penalise the firm doing the greatest service to the community, either directly or indirectly, because if some firms did not make big profits I do not think the Chancellor of the Exchequer would get the money he requires. He spoke last week with great gravity about the financial situation, but it is the firms who make at the lowest cost who are able to do the export trade and to compete with the foreigner, but if you are going to continue a policy of submitting the business of every trader, wholesale or retail, to a local committee, whether it be in Birmingham, in Manchester, or in London, how is it possible for such a committee, who cannot be experts in all things, to adjust where a man goes over the border-line between a reasonable and an unreasonable profit? Suppose a trader is asked to bring forward his trading account for last year, in order to prove his gross and his net profit, because we must bear in mind the difference between gross and net profit and how that profit is dissipated and what is in the gross profit. The gross profit is influenced and affected by the turnover, and the greater the turnover down will go the percentage of net profit. I can speak of firms who turnover their capital once a week, and of others who turn over their capital once a year. Who is to adjust what is to be the profit, gross or net, which a man in a quick ready-money trade turns over every week—£1,000 on hardly any capital, because he has a week's credit—and of a firm which carries £50,000 worth of stock and turns over the stock once a year or once in two years, because it does a big credit trade? It is a very fine thing for a lot of inexperienced people to adjust profits to a nicety and to penalise a man if they do not see eye to eye with a trader, because he is charging what they think is just over the
border-line of a just profit. Take a mans trading account for last year. Assuming for the moment that he was dealing with raw materials he had bought the year before at an easy price, he probably made last year a rather big profit and, of course, paid excess war profits on it. If a tribunal under this Act is set up and he brings forward his trading account to show what his gross and net profits were for last year, that would be no guide as to what it will be this year. The conditions are entirely changed, as the raw materials are entirely changed.
I am speaking as a manufacturer who knows something about it. I have in my hand four quotations from four firms for a particular article used in every home in the country. I manufacture the same article myself, but, having more orders than I could complete, I thought I might factor a good quantity if I could buy the mat a right price. The difference between the lowest and the highest price quoted me—and there are two between—is 100 per cent. I have no doubt the firm who quoted the highest price would, if he came before a tribunal under this Act, say he had worked out his cost sheet, and show that he was only getting a reasonable profit. This firm has been asked to reconsider its price, and has returned the answer that it cannot do so. This is a film which has been engaged for four years on aeroplane work, and I presume, as a manufacturer, his cost sheets were got out in the same way as he did them for aeroplane work—that is to say, in a way which the Government considered reasonable—and when he gets out a cost sheet for an article which I want, it is 100 per cent. more than I can make it for myself, or than somebody else has offered to make it for me. The fact is that the firm who quoted the lowest price could raise his price 50 per cent. and still be selling lower than the highest price. He would be charged with making unreasonable profit, but the firm who charged the highest price would go scot-free, because they would probably show their cost sheets. The point is as to how the cost sheets are made up. It is just as easy to water your establishment expenses as it has been in the past to water the capital of a company. You may have directors who are buyers, with heavy travelling expenses, or draughtsmen with heavy incidental expenses, and you can make up your charges in a way which would satisfy—and which has satisfied—the Ministry of
Air and the Ministry of Munitions, and which would satisfy a tribunal under this Act. If hon. Members bear these facts in mind, they must see that this Bill must fail to secure what it sets out to do. The Minister of Food, speaking on behalf of the Government, last week, said, in most unmistakable language, that it could not be properly done without an enormous administrative staff, and that then there was a danger of doing more harm than good. If the Ministry of Food have not been able, with the expert assistance that they have, to bring down food to a reasonable price, how is a tribunal to succeed which has not got the same expert advice? If it has been thought desirable to control food and leave it out of this Bill on the assumption that control is a good thing for the people, why not endeavour to control a few more things in which this profiteering is presumed to go on? Why not extend your controlling, if in the imagination of the Government controlling is good; and if controlling is not good, then the sooner you do away with it the better?
8.0 P.M.
I am of opinion that controlling is good, and that it could be extended far more than it is. I think the prices of food are to-day too high, and for this reason: A firm who has a number of registered customers knows exactly what his sales will be day by day, and what his requirements will be, and if he is a wise buyer he has no waste, and it is the waste in every business that cuts into the profit. Therefore, under a controlled system, a firm who can regulate its buying and selling to a nicety, whether it be a butcher, a fishmonger, a greengrocer, or anything else, will make the largest amount of profit, having regard to the fact that he has no waste. Taking this into consideration, I am of opinion, as one who comes into contact daily with traders, and who am a multiple shopkeeper myself, that they are making better profits to-day—whether they are butchers, fishmongers, or greengrocers—than ever they made before If control is effective, by all means extend your control, and fix the prices of things where they can be fixed. But this Bill only deals with the things in common use by the majority of the community. I suppose profiteering can go on to an unlimited extent in articles which are not used by the majority of the population. This Bill speaks of one of a class of
articles. We can imagine a committee sitting round and discussing what is one of a class. A chair is one of a class, but there were six Chippendale chairs sold the other day for over £l,000. Are they one of a class used by the majority of the community? If so, what would be a reasonable profit on this kind of thing?

Sir A. GEDDES: Read on, and you will see that it is "one of a kind."

Mr. PERRING: A chair is one of a kind used by the majority of the people, but these six Chippendale chairs—and the same argument would apply to a multitude of other things of an exclusive type—are one of a kind or one of a class. Who is to judge what is to be a reasonable price for these? Assuming the trader bought a thing of this sort under its value, is he to sell it at a profit of 5 per cent., or at a price a buyer is delighted to buy it at? How are you going to arrive at what is a reasonable profit for that trader? His profit must vary from time to time. And then there is the question of the enormous amount of furniture and machinery hired out under lease or agreement. Last week we dealt with machinery in the boot trade under a lease. Whether it is machines, motor cars, or furniture, or the hundred and one things hired, there is a much higher profit made out of these things than out of cash trade. It may be that in some cases an unreasonable profit is being made. Who is to judge what profit a man is to have for a one year, two years' or three years hiring? And why is profiteering to go on in goods not used by the majority of people? The plant and machinery which go to make up goods which the whole community desire will affect directly and indirectly the cost of production, but if I buy a lorry, or motor car I can be robbed day and night, so far as I understand the Bill, and no attempt will be made to deal with that. Is that going to help our export and import trade? The things which are not used by the majority of people will be the very things which will enable the foreigner to creep in. The President of the Board of Trade said that one of the chief reasons for this Bill was to allay discontent. Do you not think the traders of this country are just as much discontented when they know, lightly or wrongly, that a ship owner can sell a ship which cost him £14,000 for £140,000, whereas the man who bought
timber two years ago and puts it into goods to-day, and who pays Excess Profits Tax, can be fined for getting an unreasonable profit.
I have endeavoured to point out weaknesses of this Bill of a concrete character, but I do submit that this Bill will cause friction, will harass traders, and will not benefit the consumer, and I do suggest to the President of the Board of Trade that, in view of the serious situation, as foreshadowed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer last week, his great abilities and his Department would be better employed in devoting every moment of their time to seeing how and where they could promote production and the increase of wealth in this country, by dealing with the question of millions instead of the question of pounds. It has already been said in this Debate, and hinted at by the President of the Board of Trade, that there is not the amount of profiteering that has been imagined, and that it is a good thing to show the people there is not this large amount of profiteering. I have never heard an argument like that to justify the bringing in of a Bill which is to persuade the people that there is no profiteering, and under which decisions are to be arrived at by a Committee who are not experienced, and are unable to form an accurate judgment, and when you have found out that there is no profiteering, the public will be satisfied, and that justifies the Bill. Is that the spirit in which Governments are to govern, and to be stampeded into legislation because of a Press campaign which is largely devoted to the object of damaging the Government, devoting its energies one week to abusing the trader, and next week to abusing the Government? We have not heard in this House to-day any strong evidence of profiteering, although the President of the Board of Trade has at his command a huge machine. We ought to have had brought to this House concrete evidence. Surely it can be found, if it is so rampant, before this Bill is introduced. Then, again, the Bill involves investigation, and before the investigation is complete the six months will have elapsed, and the Bill will have become out of date.
There is just one other question with which I want to deal. As I understand this Bill, it does not deal with food or controlled articles. Then, can the municipalities deal in food and controlled articles? I would like the right hon. Gentleman to
answer this question, because it seems to me, if the Bill excludes controlled articles, it follows that power is given to municipalities to deal in other than controlled articles, and, that being so, is It suggested that municipalities should set up trading in household requisites other than food? Just imagine municipalities setting up trading in the multitude of things sold in the course of trade! They will have to engage buyers and staffs and all the paraphernalia associated with trade, and at the end of six months they will have a huge quantity of stuff on their hands. Is it a practical proposition? You are suggesting in the Bill something which really cannot be done in six months, and, if you could do it, what guarantee have we of control? Take national kitchens. Has anybody ever seen the balance-sheets and returns of the national kitchens, and what they have lost? I have seen a few, and they have made big losses. I am not complaining, but surely we are not going to continue the policy, now the War is over, of subsidising trading in this way? Reference has been made to Ilford and Barking and the street markets. It is another indirect form of subsidising trade. The costermonger pays no rates or other charges, and never pays Income Tax—at least, I have never heard of a coster paying Income Tax. He is much too clever to cover up his income. But the ordinary trader has not only to pay rates to keep the streets clean and so forth, but to pay taxes. Is it the intention of the Government, which cannot get enough revenue now, to set up a system of trading which will further reduce the profits of the bond fide trader and reduce his income, and thereby reduce revenue?
That is called a far-seeing policy dealing with profiteering. As a matter of fact, the Government have been paying big wages in munitions and other Government employment far in excess of the ordinary market wage, but they have been getting it back in the form of taxes on beer, tobacco, and other things. Now they are going to set up a system of subsidising everything and everybody. We have already subsidies approximating £200,000,000 a year, and now we are to have added another kind of subsidy of trading which is going to cut into the ordinary trader who has got to help to pay the subsidy. To my mind, it is a very illogical proceeding, and, speaking as a trader, and one associated with the shop-keeping class, who has sat on a tribunal
and a food committee, I know these committees are utterly incapable of dealing with these questions at all. I know how they are constituted. It is invariably the practice of the mayor and corporation to select the committee or the majority of the committee, and the complexion of the committee is biassed more or less by those who select the committee. That is how it has been done in the past, and I presume will be done in the future. The result will be that in one part of the country you will have a majority of co-operators, in another part a majority of unionists, and in another part a majority of railwaymen. There will be no equality or unanimity in the whole proceedings, and we have no guarantee throughout the length and breadth of the land that there will be any uniformity of decision or of justice meted out to the people.

Mr. ARTHUR MICHAEL. SAMUEL: To vote for the Bill, in my opinion, is to sink one's self-respect as an economist; to vote against it is to deprive the Government of an opportunity of showing the country that you cannot break the law of supply and demand. As a matter of fact, you can break no economic laws, in my humble opinion. If you try to break them, they will break you. I think many of the arguments Ricardo put forward on the theory of rent will very well apply in this Debate. But I am going to vote for this Bill, not because I like it, not because I think it good, but because I think it may dispel the fears of the people that they are being swindled and are without protection, and will give an opportunity to the Government of looking into the working of certain trades, although when I hear the Meat Trust referred to, I do not know how in the world you are going to control the profiteering—if you call it so—of the American Meat Trust.

Mr. PERRING: It is not in the Bill.

Mr. SAMUEL: I heard someone in the Debate refer to the Meat Trust. But, as I say, the Bill will give an opportunity to the Government to look into certain things, and it may be that some things may be put right. But the whole Bill is based on an economic fallacy, and I will try to explain why I think it is so. Further, there is one part of the Bill which I do not like at all, and I wish it were a separate Clause which I could vote against. It is this: Living as I have most of my life in a great provincial city, I am
quite well aware that ill-disposed people are only too glad to use a weapon to spite their neighbour. I should be very sorry to see this Bill used as a sort of inquisition or as a means to steal a march on a neighbour if provisions are not inserted to prevent malicious prosecutions or vexatious actions. I cannot understand why the President of the Board of Trade said that this Bill should apply to the home markets. He said twice that this measure should apply to the home markets. If the Board of Trade, through its Bill, was going to cut down the price, let us say, of any article that we might be able to export to America, the first thing that the manufacturer or the shopkeeper or the factor would do would be to say, "To Jericho with your controlled price in the home market; I am going to send this article abroad." That may be. How would the right hon. Gentleman like to see boots, shoes, and clothing go abroad. It would be a good tiling to send them to America. You would not suppress the export of these things which are made in England from going forth to America. It would help our exchange, we know. On the other hand, it would reduce the supply of things which are necessaries here—boots, shoes, clothes. But these are, let us imagine, very much wanted in America, and certainly in Canada at present. It would, however, reduce the supply to our own people, and it would defeat the very thing that you are setting forth to remedy—you would increase the scarcity in the home market.
The remedy is in our own hands. Supply and demand are at the bottom of the whole of this "profiteering." There is a shortage of supply; and excess of demand. I do not know what profiteering is. Does it mean excessive profits? Does it mean excessive prices? Or excessive cost? My doctor charged me three guineas recently for a consultation, instead of a couple of guineas. Is that profiteering? I do not say so. I want a better definition of profiteering; for my doctor tells me that he is bound to charge me more because at the present prices he cannot live. Coals cost him more; so do clothes; so does food! Who are the profiteers? Who are the people that have put all these things up against my doctor? Is it not the Labour people themselves? I do not be grude them their wages. But you cannot have it both ways. If you put up the price of labour, and coal, and various other things that go to the manufacture of the
necessaries of life, transport, and what not, then all these things that come into the hands of the working and other classes go up, more wages have to be given, and so the whole vicious circle goes on. If wages are put up two and a half or three times above what they were at any given period, and the cost of living only goes up to twice as much as it was compared with the same period, you will at once bring about what is called an excessive demand for goods, and, with a shortage of supplies, as was seen in time of war, and on account of the manufacturing of war material absorbing all the material and on account of the output being for war purposes, you will probably have what is now called profiteering. I do not think I have referred to the following point, but I think that a good deal of the extra cost of goods from which we are now suffering has been brought about by the Excess Profits Duty. No doubt it causes a very wasteful result in the production of goods. Every man who can claps a little extra on from the raw material on its way to the manufacturer, then the manufacturer, the distributor, all who handle the article from the time it leaves the earth as raw material to the time it reaches the consumer. Every man, in order to make that with which to pay his Excess Profits Tax, high Income Tax, and so on, claps on a little, and so the price is made higher.
I was very much interested in what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said the other day about the currency notes. He stated that there had been a large increase in the amount of currency notes issued. I harness that up with profiteering or high prices. What does it mean? It mean this. That we borrowed at least 1,000 millions from abroad, and also we borrowed millions from those at home. Certainly from abroad 1,000 millions came in. It was paid in wages, salaries, gratuities, dividends. This money is now being spent like water. The people who have received these increases are spending it in every form of extravagance. At no time were there so many pleasure motor cars, so much champagne drunk, or at so high a price, so much feasting or such high-priced clothing bought, and this money is going round at a greater celerity than before. This absorbs a large amount of labour for unneessaries. It incites manufacturers to make these things, and so diverts raw material and labour from necessaries which would increase the
supply of these necessaries in this country, and so give the poor and the middle classes an opportunity of buying them, and its cessation would increase the ability of these very manufacturers to export these goods abroad and receive in exchange food and other things of which we require here a greater supply to keep down the cost of living. Some of these observations refer to the class to which Members of this House mainly belong, and I think our private extravagance is a matter of which we ought to be ashamed. This has a great deal to do with the high cost of living in this country, by diverting, as I have said, the manufacturer from making necessaries, and so allowing him to export a surplus, which in turn would bring as payments the imports, articles of food, and so on. As I have just pointed out, this process would keep down the cost of living in this country. This Bill deals with the symptoms, and not with the cause. What is the cause?

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Restriction of imports !

Mr. SAMUEL: There is no restriction applicable to the present argument. My hon. and gallant Friend speaks about the restriction of imports. He seems to regard this question of the restriction of imports very much as Mr. Dick did King Charles' head. It has nothing to do with the cause. Let me finish what I was going to say. I was about to say that the whole position hinges upon this problem of supply and demand. If there are ten people who each wish to buy one item of which there are only six, the consequence is that the price goes up to these ten people. If you turn the matter round and say: There are ten people who wish to buy articles of which there are sixteen, then those ten persons will have it pretty much their own way, because they will dictate the price to the sellers. Therefore, I say it does not matter what you do with regard to controlling the price, the position remains the same—the supply is too little and the demand too great. The hon. Gentleman sitting below me (Colonel Wedgwood) a few moments ago remarked about the restriction of imports. I do not know whether I would be within the Rules of the House in saying so, but I happen to be a member of the Committee which the President of the Board of Trade asked some Members of this House to join. I was chairman of one of the Sub-committees dealing with light chemicals. When the Committee with
which I was associated had an application before us, the one object uppermost in our minds, and the one single object in view, was our anxiety to keep our workers in employment. We kept that first in mind, and we said, "If these goods can be produced in this country we shall keep the restrictions on so as to allow these men who are employed by these manufacturers to do work and earn wages. That was our reason, and our only reason. Suppose you remove those restrictions is that going to bring down the price of the goods? I do not think so, and for this reason. There is no restriction on the importation of food, and removal does not bring down the price of food.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: There is restriction of importation!

Mr. SAMUEL: I do not think so. I think that the Government would welcome cheap food coming in from anywhere. There is no restriction that I know of in respect to the main necessaries of life. Supposing you take all restrictions off the import of silk goods, cotton hosiery, or cotton gloves—say on silk. You will, to my certain knowledge, inflict an injury in one place, where there will be at least 1,000 men and women thrown out of work. Hosiery and fabric gloves came into this country from Japan six or eight months ago at a price less than we had to pay for the raw material. If you had let in these articles from Japan thousands of men would have been out of work in Nottingham and that district, and that would soon settle high prices, and in a disastrous manner, because they would not have money to pay for food. I dislike the expression arbitrary restrictions, used by an hon. Member, because they are not arbitrary. I was one of forty who sat on some of those committees, and one of them represented the largest body of consumers in the country—that is the Co-operative Wholesale Society—and he amply protected the interests of the consumers. We tried to keep down prices very much in the same spirit as this Bill seeks to do, and everything we did was done by men who were conscious of the mischief that might be done if prices were kept up. I shall vote far this Bill, not because I like it but because I know that in many cases unreasonably high prices are being charged for food and certain necessaries of life to the poor. They have suffered, and they will continue to suffer so long as supplies of necessaries are short, and supplies of
necessaries are being kept low because of the extravagance of all classes in this country who are causing unnecessaries to be produced.
All the trains are crammed with holiday makers, and all the resorts from the South Coast to Blackpool are crammed. Every theatre is crammed, and money is being squandered which should be saved by people and not spent in putting up prices against themselves. I want extravagant people to keep their money for a better use. In the name of everything that is reasonable let them keep out of the market, putting up prices one against the other, in face of shortage of supplies. If you bring down, say, the price of cabbages a man will have more money for cigars and so put up their price, and if you bring down the price of cigars he will have more money to spend on chairs and put up their prices, and so on. It is like a train of trucks on the railway. You allow the first one to bump and the motion is conveyed right to the other end to the last truck. This Bill is as rotten economically as it can be from the first letter of the opening paragraph to the last, though it may frighten wrongdoers. But I am going to vote for it so that it may let people see that, though you cannot break the economic laws of supply and demand, it is at least an honest attempt by the Government to put down profiteering.

Mr. SIMM: We have been assured by the last speaker that we cannot break economic laws. I think it will be found if we refer to the text-books of the last fifty or sixty years that many of the theories of our economic teachers have been torn to shreds during the last few years. We are discussing a Bill, which has come as a measure of surprise, built on the belief that there is in this country a sufficient amount of common sense to deal with a very great evil. One thing might be the outcome of the Committee upstairs. Undoubtedly there is throughout the country a vast amount of dissatisfaction and unrest due to high prices or profiteering. The high prices are there, and I hope that the Committee upstairs will reveal how they have been created, how much has gone in the way of increased wages, and how much is due to factors over which we cannot exercise any control. I hope these facts will be made clear to the public as quickly as possible. Nobody will object to any in-crease going in the way of wages. In pre-
war days if there was one thing in this country that was far too cheap it was labour, and most of us will be glad to see that while wages remain pretty high prices should be made to go down. I hope it will be made clear how much of the increased cost in the high price of commodities has gone in wages and that is not profiteering.
The hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Jones), in moving the rejection of this Bill, said it would cost the country a matter of £50,000 to administer it for six months, and that it would take six months before anything could be done to check the evil. There is one body in this country with a turnover of millions a year and supplying most of the common necessities—that is the Co-operative Wholesale Society—and they sent representatives who were prepared to give evidence before a Select Committee, and if we take the main things in life that we eat or wear in the manufacturing world this society manufactures very largely in all the essentials in life that administers to our needs and comforts. This body exists not as private exploiters but to serve the interests of their own members and their prices are much the same as others. In these matters I think the Board of Trade in this country may have some influence.
With regard to the local tribunals, I am satisfied that when they are set up you will have to do something to prevent a grocer sitting on a tribunal to decide a case in which complaints have been made against a grocer, but I think that when the affairs of a local tradesman come before a local tribunal in most cases the men in the same trade will not sit in judgment upon their fellow tradesmen, but the case will be left to members of other trades. We all remember the time when in this country, through the violation of economic laws, the price of rabbits was fixed at Is. 9d., with the result that the rabbits disappeared and they would not come out of their holes at less than 3s. 6d. I hope powers will be extended to local tribunals to deal with the men who withhold commodities from the market. I know the local tribunals could not undertake to do that, but I think it might be done by a proper tribunal. In the matter of greengroceries there are certain areas where the market gardens may be either in the same county or in an adjoining county, and the local tribunals might come together to see that these people do not withhold their supplies from the market, and they might see that reasonable prices
are fixed, and that the available supplies should be forthcoming. We have a number of people in this country who have a strong liking for beer. This one item alone affords a means by which the local tribunals can do a great service to the community. I believe millions of pounds have gone to brewers and beer sellers in the last two or three years which was not justly theirs. One might begin with half a pint of beer, and when the retailer fixes his profit it is based upon the cost of a half a pint of beer, he commonly serves in glasses containing three-fifths of half a pint, and consequently the brewers and retailers are making three barrels of beer go as far as five barrels ought to go. I suggest that if powers are given to local tribunals to lay down regulations a good deal that has been done in this direction could be entirely changed. We have read in the papers of the extortionate charges made at hotels and refreshment places, and even for cards at race meetings. There has grown up in this country a vicious practice which is due in some degree to the alien element. In the old days a customer could send in his or her order with the local carrier and could depend upon receiving the goods and upon being charged a fair price, but in, the tailoring and furniture trades especially we have had introduced an alien element, which has almost secured control, and I am afraid that in some cases they have not the same sense of fair play as the British trader. When these local tribunals are set up with power to check extortion on the part of the ordinary trader, they might go further and say that certain persons who have come here and who cannot carry on their trade honestly should go back to where they came from, and so give honest people a chance. Although the Bill has been somewhat harshly criticised, very few constructive ideas have been put forward by the other side. Something needs to be done. I am perfectly certain that the evil of profiteering has been exaggerated. The high prices are there. We cannot get them down, but we can remove public distrust by the powers given by this Bill. Even on a smaller point, if it checks a man who wants to rob his fellow man and restores honesty, it will be worth its place on the Statute Book.

Mr. CHARLES EDWARDS: The hon. Member for Farnham (Mr. A. M. Samuel) seemed to assume that the cost of living
always followed wages. In fact, it is the opposite that happens. Every demand for increased wages made since the War has been based on the existing cost of living. Our complaint before the War was that the cost of living had gone up and that we sought an increase in wages. I saw a cartoon in a Cardiff paper—I believe it was the "Western Mail"—a week or two ago which hit off the situation. There were two men riding hobby-horses, one called "Cost of living" and the other "Wages." The one called "Wages" was behind and said. "I am darned if I can catch up, whatever I do !" That is the position.

Mr. A. M. SAMUEL: It was stated before the Coal Commission that wages had gone up in larger ratio than the price of food. That was the point on which I built my argument.

Mr. EDWARDS: The demand was made on the then existing cost of living. I find myself in queer company this evening. I am opposing this Bill, but I disagree as much with the Mover and Seconder of the Amendment as I do with the Bill itself. The Mover of the Amendment seemed to think that everything was all right and that the Government and no one need take any notice of profiteering, because there was none existing. The Seconder said that the only thing to be done was to remove the control at present existing, restore freedom of competition, and that would answer the purpose. That has not been proved in practice. Whenever any article has been decontrolled, on the morrow the price has gone up. I do not know whether hon. Members have had the same experience as myself. I have received letters from every food committee in my Constituency asking that certain articles should be controlled again. Only three weeks ago a deputation came from practically the whole of the food committees in Monmouthshire. They met the Food Controller and asked him to re-impose the controlled prices. The chief speaker was the manager of a very large co-operative society, and he gave figures proving that as soon as control was taken off the price of bacon and other articles immediately went up at an alarming rate. Therefore I do not agree at all with the hon. Member who says that we ought to take control off. We really want to put it on again. The Government cannot help themselves in this matter. The questions
of profiteering and the cost of living must be attacked. I believe that profiteering is rampant in the country, but I do not believe that the retailer is the biggest sinner or the man who should be attacked first. What has happened during the last four or five years? The cost of living has gone up until the men have made a demand for higher wages. Those higher wages have been conceded. Yet still the cost of living went up, and again a demand was made for higher wages. There comes a time—I am not sure that we have not already reached it—when we cannot go any further. It is a vicious circle. That vicious circle must be broken if we are to exist as a nation. It was a common saying among the men when wages were going up, "The wages arc no good to us because we simply have to hand them over to other people." Deputations from certain organised trades have met representatives of the Government more than once asking them to pay attention to the side of the question we are dealing with to-day. The demand for higher wages would have dropped out altogether but for the fact that the Government have delayed so long in attacking the question. I am very glad they are paying some attention to it, although I do not believe they are doing so in the best method.
Why was this Bill brought in at all? The right hon. Gentleman who introduced it to-day stated that the Government have been considering it for six months or more. If they were doing so, it is a strange thing that about three weeks ago they should have appointed a Committee to inquire into the matter. I should like to say a word about that Committee. I believe that it—I am not a member of it—had the confidence of the country. When it was first suggested, and the names were announced, there was no adverse newspaper comment. Compare that with what we have seen since last Tuesday, when the right hon. Gentleman went to the Committee and said he was going to bring in a Bill. There were comments in every newspaper published in the country, very many of them unfavourable to this Bill. Trades people, Labour leaders, and other men in different spheres of life have been interviewed, and the interviews have been published in the Press. Almost without exception they are opposed to this Bill. They say it will not have the effect it is intended to have. I believe that if that
Committee had been allowed to go on with its work it would have been much more effective than this Bill can be which proposes to set up local tribunals. What will those local tribunals deal with? They will deal with the local trader, with the retailer. But suppose the retailer proves that his profit is not unreasonable? That is not proof that there is no profiteering in that particular article. Take a suit of clothes. We pay nearly three times as much for clothes as before the War. We might go to the tailor and charge him with profiteering, but he might be able to prove that he is not making any greater profit than he did before the War. That, I say, does not prove there is no profiteering, and that the prices are not very much higher than they ought to be. I believe that this Committee would have sifted the evidence and have gone to the very root of the trouble in regard to every article. But the local tribunal will not be able to do that. It will simply deal with the local people. What is necessary is to go to the source of everything, and if the Committee had been allowed to do that it could have brought in recommendations without all this trouble of setting up special tribunals, and it could have been left to the local benches of magistrates to deal with, profiteers.
I am not sure whether it was not a fear of some recommendation of that kind which caused the, Government to bring in this Bill and to dissolve the Committee which had been set up. We have had lately Committees dealing with certain matters whose findings have been far from pleasant reading. We have had one in the last day or two whose findings have been the contrary of pleasant. I think the Committee would have done much better work, it might have been a little longer about it, but then I do not believe that the retailers are the biggest sinners in. this matter. Certain comments have been made on Clause 3. No one need worry about that Clause. I do not believe the Government intend to give these powers to the municipalities. The whole argument of the right hon. Gentleman was against taking part in trade and against competing with private people. The history of the Government is against giving these powers to municipalities. They got rid of the ships they owned as soon as they could; they got rid of their shipyards as soon as they could, so that they should not enter into competition with private people, yet they have a Clause in this Bill which
enables them to give power to the local authorities to trade. I believe they never intended to do anything of the sort. It is simply a bit of padding in the Bill, and hon. Members who have objected to that particular Clause need not concern them-selves about it. Had the Labour party been in power they might have had reason for doing so. Personally I would advocate something of the sort being done. But still I must admit I think the appointment of the Select Committee was the better plan. There seems to be no confidence in this Bill. You are dealing here simply with the people who take in the pence; you do not touch those who reap the thousands of pounds. That seems to be the weakness of this Bill.

Mr. PENNEFATHER: As representative of a very large working-class constituency I feel bound to support the Government in regard to this Bill. I cannot understand how anybody who professes to represent Labour can go so far as to vote against this Bill. Even although we may all agree that it is not a thoroughly good Bill, it is at any rate a step in the right direction. I should be sorry for anybody who represents a Labour constituency who went down into that constituency and said he had voted against this step in the direction of checking profiteering. It may not be, and I do not believe it is, a complete chuck. There are features in the Bill I do not like and which i may endeavour to get rid of on the Committee stage, but at this point on the Motion for Second Reading I feel compelled to support the Bill, because in spite of all that has been said by the last speaker end by other hon. Members the first lines of the Bill lay down a principle which everybody who represents Labour is bound to support. What are the words of the first paragraph of the Bill? They are:
Whereas it appears that the prices of articles are, to the detriment of the people, being enhanced in some cases by the charging of prices yielding an unreasonable profit.
Do any hon. Members on the Labour Benches dispute that the prices of some articles are being enhanced to the detriment of the people by charging unreason-able prices? No. Well, here we get some common form of agreement with the Bill to start with. These words are in the right spirit. It is not a Bill merely, as some hon. Members appear to suggest, to deal with the retailer. There is not a word in the Bill which singles out the retailer, and even if
it did, I should not be afraid of offending the retailers in my own Constituency, because I do not believe that they are profiteers. It is only the profiteers in a constituency who could be offended by this Bill, which, broadly, is directed against persons who are engaged in the production, handling or distribution of goods. These, of course, are, practically speaking, nearly the whole nation, and therefore this Bill merely lays down the principle that, whatever the class of men may be, and whatever business they may be engaged in, they are not to be allowed at this juncture to make unreasonable profits. Again, I say I cannot see how any hon. Member who professes to represent the masses of the people can take exception to that. There are other points in the Bill with which I do not agree, but they are minor points which can be dealt with on the Committee stage. It has been suggested more than once that this Bill is a panicky Bill, brought in a hurry. I do not agree. I think it is a belated Bill. An hon. Member near me dissents. Some of us were raising this question probably before he was thought of as a Parliamentary candidate. In 1917 I raised this question of profiteering and the power of the Government to deal with it on no fewer than five occasions, both by speech and by question, and I would like to draw the attention of the House to a question I put to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food on the 19th of December in that year, when I inquired of him whether the Government had sufficient power to enable it to deal with particular producers in this country who made undue profits, and, if so, why more food-producers had not been proceeded against? The Parliamentary Secretary of that day replied that the answer to the first part of my question was in the affirmative. He maintained, in fact, that the Government, two years ago, had sufficient power to enable them to deal with those who were profiteering, and he went on to say that the reason why more producers had not been prosecuted was due to the absence of any evidence that they had made unlawful profits. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food at that time was my right hon. Friend (Mr. Clynes) who spoke earlier in the Debate, and it does seem extraordinary that he should say what he said to-night, in view of the fact that he himself, nearly two years ago, claimed that the Government had sufficient power to deal with profiteering, and that the only
reason why more prosecutions had not taken place was that there was an absence of evidence that people had made undue profits. That shows the difference between when he is in the Ministry and when he is in Opposition. It is still more curious that the right hon. Gentleman should oppose this Bill to-night, because he pointed out, in answer to my question, that the weak spot, so far as the Government was concerned, was the absence of any evidence that people had made unlawful profits. Yet when the Government bring in a Bill to set up machinery to collect the evidence to make it clear that people have made unlawful profits, the right hon. Gentleman opposes it.
Whatever defects this Bill may have, it has the virtue that it proposes to bring forward in open daylight the people who have complaints to make, to confront them with those, who are accused of being sinners, and that the person under suspicion shall be tried by his peers. That is the meaning of these tribunals. The tribunals will be collected, I presume, more or less from all classes, on a democratic basis, and the supposed offenders will probably be drawn from all sections of the community. Therefore, the people who are under suspicion will really be tried by their peers. If it proves that there is a primâ facie case, and that these people are guilty of making unreasonable profits, does anybody in this House want to defend them? I do not want to defend any man who has made unreasonable profits. If anyone is making unreasonable profits, and he can be found guilty of it, let him by all means be punished. In other cases, the person or class of traders may be found to be quite innocent, and the high prices which have been attributed to profiteering may be found to be really attributable to something else. I can quite well understand that a man in my Constituency or in any other may go into a shop to-day and ask the latest price, say, of bacon, and may find that it is 2d. or 6d. per lb. more than he was charged three months ago. He may say to the shopkeeper, "You must be profiteering." If the case is investigated, it may be found that the cause of the advancement has nothing to do with the retailer or the wholesaler, but is due to the fall in exchange between here and America. The Anglo-American exchange has fallen something like fifty points in the last few
months. A few days ago it was suggested by a member of the Government that it may fall another thirty points, and that again may put prices up. If the apparent cases of profiteering are in fact due to circumstances such as rates of exchange, surely it is right and proper, and altogether to the good, that the people of this country should know it, because, once they understand that, they will be led, perhaps, to understand what hinges upon it, and they may be led to ask themselves and others, "Why is it that the exchange is falling between this country and America and other countries?" They may thus be brought to grasp the fact that exchanges fall because we are producing too little and exporting too little and importing too much. If we can get the people of this country to understand that, and can get them to abandon the idea that everything is due to the sins of their fellow countrymen, why, that is all to the good.
I therefore support this Bill because I believe it is bound to have a good moral effect. Those who may be hesitating as to whether they will or will not indulge in the vice of profiteering will think twice before they do so if this Bill is passed. If investigations are to be made and people are to be accused and proved guilty, and if the real causes of high prices are to be disclosed, it will have a great educational effect upon the country. Although I cannot say that I regard this Bill as perfect, or anything like it, I certainly think that it has its merits, and I intend to support it. I believe, in spite of the protests of some of my hon. Friends who claim to represent Labour, that they and I will be found voting to-night in support of this Bill on the Second Reading, because I cannot imagine how anybody who really has the interests of Labour at heart can vote against a Bill which will have some effect in checking profiteering and in reducing prices, and which will also have some effect in allaying the indignation which is felt in the country, and in assuring the populace that we in the House of Commons have their interests at heart.

9.0 P.M.

Lieut.-Colonel W. GUINNESS: We have listened to a very interesting speech on the need for some legislation to deal with profiteering, but I am sure my hon. Friend will forgive me if I say that he has not gone very closely into detail as to how these particular proposals are going to
effect that aim. I am sure that the whole House wishes to stop profiteering, but we have heard very little this afternoon to satisfy us that the Bill will achieve that object. It appears to me to be a very bad case of a hasty and ill-considered measure being put before this House at the end of a Session simply as window-dressing. I feel that we have a right to ask for rather more details than have so far been vouchsafed to us as to how this Bill originated. Last Tuesday the Minister for Food appeared before the Select Committee on Profiteering, and gave some very interesting evidence. While he admitted the need to eliminate the speculator, he accepted the summary of his evidence that high prices of food were not due to excessive profits. He was asked for suggestions, and he made them. They were very good suggestions—much better than those which have been adopted in this Bill. The Minister for Food, however, dropped not the slightest hint of any such proposals as those which two days later were sprung upon an astonished Committee and introduced into this House. [An HON. MEMBER: "The following day!"] Surely it is very remarkable that on the Tuesday the Minister for Food had no idea about these proposals !
Apparently this Minister, who, from his experience, had a better right to be consulted and to give good advice than any other Minister, was never told anything about it. We were told this afternoon that the Board of Trade had long been considering this matter. If so, it is startling evidence of the present chaos in the Government, which is due to the suspension of the Cabinet system, that while the President of the Board of Trade has been carefully considering the matter and the Cabinet presumably have had it before them, no idea was in the mind of the Minister of Food last Tuesday that they were going to introduce such legislation. I object to the Bill in its present form, because I think it will be very disappointing to the country, and in its present state of mind such a disappointment is dangerous. Until you can alter the rules of arithmetic, until you can add up two and two to make three, you cannot get away from the fact that higher wages for the same output mean higher prices, and now we have got the additional difficulty that there is a reduced output and there is scarcity of many materials, and this forces those businesses which are dealing in the necessities of life to charge a higher price
to enable the goods to be marketed at all. There is a strong possibility that we have not yet reached the final level to which prices will rise.
It is most desirable that we should restore confidence, but I want to see more drastic proposals than those contained in the Bill. If it is effective at all the Bill will prove to be a very terrible instrument of oppression. The position of the trader who will be liable, from motives of spite perhaps, to be pulled up before a body which perhaps has no great sympathy with his trade, and is perhaps even jealous of his position, will be most undesirable. Surely there should be some penalty in the Bill at least for vexatious complaints against traders. Then it is impossible to define what a reasonable profit is. We know that large profits in one line are often necessary to make up for small profits in another, and you cannot lay down a fixed return on capital because the competition of large businesses with a big turnover and resulting facilities for economical management and the avoidance of waste would, if they were limited to the same return on capital, absolutely knock out every small business. Think, too, of the effect on the magistrates of having to try these cases ! Unlike every other legal decision which they give, they will have to decide such cases without any code to guide them. I am informed by lawyers that those cases which were referred to this afternoon by the hon. Gentleman (Mr. McCurdy), the cases which come before the Court where it is necessary to prove that a man has acted in an unreasonable manner, are about the most difficult cases which they have to decide, although they have a long series of legal precedents to base themselves on. What will be the result of proceedings before these tribunals? You will have great popular feeling on the one hand, evoked by necessarily arbitrary and conflicting decisions in different parts of the country. On the other hand you will have very great bitterness aroused locally by some persons apparently guilty of profiteering getting off owing to the difficulty of drawing a proper charge under this Act.
Then I should like to protest against Clause 3 in its present form, which allows the widest municipal trading. Considering that this House only a few short weeks ago threw out a Bill for municipal trading introduced by the Labour party, I do not
see what consistency is left to those who support this Claue. Under proper conditions no doubt a municipality in the present emergency should be entitled by its competition to keep down prices, but we must hedge those concessions very carefully; otherwise we may find that certain local authorities will be subsidising this trading out of the rates. Trading firms will find themselves highly rated to run a competition at a loss with their own businesses. Surely we ought to have a provision that this trading must be self-supporting and subject to frequent audit by the Board of Trade, so as to ensure that it is not subsidised in this way! This is necessary, apart from fairness to the trader, to restore public confidence, because think what will happen otherwise. You may find that in certain districts in the municipal shops, owing to a rate subvention, things will be sold much cheaper than in any shop run on commercial lines and at a price which is entirely uneconomic. This will only encourage an unjust suspicion against a lot of quite honest traders who have to make their businesses pay. It is quite possible that it would lead to popular outbreaks and that very looting which I take it this Bill is chiefly designed to provide against.
The criticism has been made that we are not justified in criticising this Bill unless we have some definite proposal to bring forward in its place. I think there is another and a better way. We must all recognise that there is a feeling in the country against profiteering. That feeling can be entirely obviated by control of prices until they have worked up to their final economic level. The President of the Board of Trade argued at some length against the suggestion, which I think no one had made, that flat prices should be imposed upon the country. Of course, flat prices would be simply disastrous. There is no necessity for them. If you provided maximum prices, all those objections which were urged by the President of the Board of Trade would fall to the ground. Such control of prices need involve no control of supplies and distribution except in those rare cases where there is a shortage of the commodity to be dealt in, and therefore we need not be appalled at the cost of this control. Probably it would mean no increase in the staff of the Ministry of Food. Probably their costings department would be transferred to the Board of Trade. Anyhow
I take it if the Board of Trade fixed these prices the costing department of the Ministry of Food would be reduced to a very large extent. There will probably be no difficulty about supplying the necessary information of the cost of food without any delay. According to the evidence of the Ministry of Food, that Ministry is already quite capable of fixing prices and margins at all stages. It is a little ambiguous in this Bill how far food will be controlled, because although at the present time food is not controlled to anything like its maximum of 94 per cent., I understand that there is a considerable number of different food supplies which will shortly revert to control. I do not know whether this Bill is going to interfere with that or not. Anyhow, there is no difficulty about fixing maximum prices for a great many classes of food, even where no attempt is made to control distribution of supply. The machinery of food control, which they have worked up to a very high pitch of efficiency during the War, could easily be extended to all commodities. Probably owing to local variations it would be necessary to work through local committees, who would have to issue prices from time to time, largely founded on information which could easily be supplied by the central costing department. Profiteering and speculation are only possible during scarcity. A plentiful supply is undoubtedly the best means we can find for bringing down prices. This House, by its vote to-night, must take care lest by vexatious interference and by pandering to an ill-informed clamour they may aggravate the already enormous difficulties under which our trade is conducted at the present time.

Major O'NEILL: There has been much criticism of this Bill from all quarters. What has struck me about most of the speeches made against the Bill is the fact that very few of them do more than express a general feeling of disapproval, without in any way indicating what those who are opposed to the Bill would put up n its place. My hon. Friend (Lieut.-Colonel Guinness) was different in this respect, that he did indicate what were his views as to how this question of profiteering should be met. If I understood him lightly, it is his opinion that the proper way to deal with profiteering is that the Government should step in and should control prices of all commodities in all circumstances. I see very great difficulties.
if not dangers, in any course such as that. I wonder very much whether my hon. Friend is going to vote against the Bill. I wonder very much whether the right hon. Gentleman the late Food Controller (Mr. Clynes), who made such a damaging attack on the Bill, is going to vote against it. I shall be very much surprised if you do not find both the right hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend in the Lobby to-night in support of the Bill.
When I heard the speech of the right hon. Gentleman who introduced the Bill one thing which astonished me mote than anything else was the fact that the Bill had not been introduced before. He spoke of the effect of profiteering upon a far larger scale than it had ever occurred to me that it had anything to do with. He spoke of profiteering as being one of the principal matters which affect the foreign exchanges. He said that the existence of profiteering in this country was to a great extent the cause of the increased imports over exports, and generally he made a very strong case in favour of bringing in some measure at the earliest possible moment to deal with this question. If that is so, what has struck me as amazing is that the Government did not introduce this Bill or some Bill of this kind long ago. We know this was a matter of immense importance and great significance to the country during the War, and that it has been so ever since, gradually culminating in the present state of affairs. Yet now, when this Session of Parliament is coming to an end, despite the dangers the Government admit in regard to this matter, they come forward for the first time and embody their proposals for dealing with it in a. Bill. It seems to me extraordinary. I am not going to play the part of a person who criticises the Bill in detail and pretends he does not wish to support it, and yet he goes into the Lobby in support of it. I consider that this Bill, in the present state of the country, is required by the country. Everybody has admitted that profiteering is going on to a very great extent in many trades and in all sorts of circumstances at the present time, and if this Parliament were to separate without having dealt in a drastic manner with this question of profiteering, which is universally recognised to be of immense importance, it would be a slur upon this House, which, I hope, it will not deserve. We know quite well that the cry of profiteering is to a certain extent fostered by the high prices which are generally prevailing
on all sides. Those high prices must eventually fall. The present prices cannot possibly continue beyond a certain limit. There must come a time when prices will fall to a level more proportionate to those which prevailed at the beginning of the War.
The real cause, as we all know, of the high prices are such questions as shortage of material, shortage of ships, leading to high freights, and the inflation of currency, which we have been discussing in almost every Debate for many weeks past. The cure for all these causes, as hon. Members have said over and over again, and they can never state too frequently—the euro for inflation of currency, for shortage of skipping, and all the different elements which go to make high prices, is one thing and one thing only, and that is to increase the productivity of the country. It is vastly important that this should be brought home more than it has been to all classes of the community, and I hope that before long the Government will undertake propaganda in this direction. But in addition to these general causes which operate to keep up prices there are others which I hope will be cured by the passage of this Bill. One of the principal causes of high prices is the fact that people are so extremely stupid as to pay them. Not long ago I happend to be sitting next to a. woman at dinner and she told me that she wished a short time ago to buy a coat and skirt from a well-known dressmaker in London. She said that before the War this coat and skirt would have cost at the very outside £ 21, but she was now asked to pay the incredible sum of £78 15s.

Mr. KILEY: Who is going to pay it?

Major O'NEILL: In spite of the fact that she is a very rich woman who could have paid that amount, I am glad to say that on hearing the price she walked out of the shop. If that charge of £78 15s. could be justified it seems to be only right that it should be justified, and I hope that the Bill will make it possible to compel people either to justify that kind of charge or else reduce the price. But I am sorry to say that there are people—who they are I cannot imagine—in this country who will pay these absurd prices, and so long as you get any portion of the public to pay such absurd prices, which could in no circumstances be justified, so long will you get profiteering. Profiteering, of course, would be prevented in ordinary circum-
stances by Competition. I was much impressed this evening by hearing the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food (Mr. McCurdy) state as a member of the Government that competition had been, replaced by combination. Seldom has a more serious statement been made in this House, and if it is true then we are face to face with an extremely serious situation. In the past, what always rectified profiteering was the natural law of competition, and if we have got great combinations of the different trades to maintain prices, then we want a Bill which will prevent those combinations from succeeding against the public. The ex-Food Controller (Mr. Clynes) said that this Bill hit the little man and did not touch the big man. I think that he was answered effectively by the Parliamentary Secretary, who showed that it was a Bill which hit both the big and the little man, if properly administered in the way it is intended to be administered. If this Bill will destroy these nefarious, so far as they are nefarious, practices of combination of traders, then I sincerely welcome it!
The right hon. Gentleman, in introducing the Bill, referred to the impression, which was I think created by him self, that this Bill would not apply to Ireland. He has rectified that, and we know now that the Bill, as I think it should, is going to apply to the United Kingdom as a whole. I am extremely glad to find that the Bill is to apply to Ireland. Not because I do not realise that there may be difficulties of detail, in matters which will have to be cured possibly in Committee or by subsequent legislation or Order. This question of local tribunals is a difficult one, and I was impressed greatly by the argument of the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Kennedy Jones) as to the difficulties which might face these tribunals in deciding local matters with regard to profiteering. But in spite of those difficulties, and the fact that in Ireland, more than in other parts of the United Kingdom, there may be difficulties with regard to the setting up of tribunals and the proper administration of these' questions, at the same time I feel that we are dealing with a very urgent and vital problem with which we must deal without delay, and if the Irish people were to be excluded from a measure of this kind, which is, at any rate, designed to check profiteering, you would be treating them with gross injustice and putting them in
an entirely different category from the rest of the United Kingdom in matters of legislation, which I think is unnecessary. I am glad that this Bill has been applied to-Ireland, and I hope sincerely that as a result of it the prices of a great many articles of universal consumption which are at present so high will be reduced. I trust that the Bill will succeed, at any rate, in getting at the main basis of profiteering, and I shall vote for it gladly in the 'belief that it will decrease prices and give some small indication of what we all so much desire to see, a resumption of productivity, prosperity, and the normal life of the country.

Mr. THOMAS: If this Bill did what my hon. Friend in his last sentence suggested. namely, deal effectively with the profiteer, I venture to suggest that there would be no difference of opinion in any part of the House as to the attitude we ought to adopt. After all, the whole question turns on whether this Bill is likely to have the effect that every Member desires. In that connection one is compelled to keep in mind that the circumstances under which this Bill is introduced are best calculated to cause very great suspicion. When I remember that this House set up a Select Committee, and that one of the first witnesses was a Minister, paid for this particular job, responsible for this work, who above any other Minister of the Crown should have known all the circumstances connected with food, that on one day he appeared before the Committee and in substance said that all this talk of profiteering was grossly exaggerated in the country, and added that so far as he was aware the Government have no real plan, and when we remember that that Minister was followed the next day by my right hon. Friend (Sir A. Geddes) with not only a cut-and-dried plan, with not only a condemnation of profiteering, with not only a very serious indictment as to what is taking place, but the statement that the Government had been considering the matter for weeks, we realise that one of two things must result. Either there is no co-ordination in the Ministry itself, either the Food Controller is kept ignorant of the Government's policy or is not considered of sufficient importance to be consulted, or, alternatively, the Government, in a panic have produced a scheme that, to say the least, shows a very hasty conversion. I submit that that fact in itself is not only
calculated to cause mistrust in the country, but it destroys confidence in the Government.

Mr. INSKIP: I understand the right lion. Gentleman to say that the Food Minister stated that profiteering has been grossly exaggerated in the country. It would be a mistake if the country were to be under the impression that the Food Minister has made a statement of that sort. He said it had been "placed out of its proper perspective." While the right lion. Gentleman has been speaking I have referred to the notes, and I find that that was so.

Mr. THOMAS: I accept the position that it was exaggerated, because that is, after all, what he meant.

Mr. INSKIP: "Placed out of proper perspective!"

Mr. THOMAS: The Food Minister was followed the next day by the right hon. Gentleman (Sir A. Geddes) who made the statement that the position was so serious that the Government must promptly produce a Bill. Therefore, with great respect to the hon. Gentleman, I do not think I overstated the case when I said that one Minister at least, to put it no higher, took a different view on this question from the Minister who followed him the next day in the witness-box. I leave the House to judge as to that point. I proceed at once, to suggest that this Bill, whilst it attempts to deal with profiteering, does not, in the considered judgment of the members of our party at least, deal with the right people. It is true, and no one can deny it, that there is profiteering amongst small shopkeepers. It is equally true that the real cause of profiteering is the trust and combine, and I am not so sure whether the Government themselves can be exempted from blame in this connection. Surely it will be admitted that the profiteer has a much better chance, to put it no higher, with a shortage of supply? It is an opportunity for him that is obvious. Then why do the Government themselves withhold the stocks they have, and give a chance to the profiteer? It is not a sufficient answer to point to the illustration of oil, as was done by the Under-Secretary in the early stage of the Debate. He answered the charge by saying, "Look what happened when we released the control of oil!" Perfectly true. But that is an entirely different thing— releasing the control of oil and placing the surplus supplies that the
Government had on the market. Let us take wool. Will it be urged for a moment that the Government have not large-surplus stocks of wool? Can it be argued that the release of that wool will not affect the market to the advantage of the consumer? Will it be argued that it will not even give employment? Therefore, it is for the Government to recognise that if the profiteer is out to take advantage, there is nothing that so plays into his hands as a shortage of supply. It is for the Government to recognise that particular fact.
On the other hand, I should like to try to-visualise the kind of system that is going to crop up in all parts of the country. We know perfectly well that what happened with the old tribunals under the Military Service Acts was this: That what constituted a claim for exemption in one district or one town did not constitute a claim for exemption in another town, with the result that we not only had all manner of anomalies, but we had all manner of abuses. I can quite understand that even under this Rill some local authority will be treating as a virtue what another local authority will be Creating as a vice. That certainly is not calculated to help things. After all, the real point is that any complaint lodged under this Bill must be lodged, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, by the consumer himself,, the consumer in those cases in the main, being poor people. But who is going to lodge a complaint against the trust or combine? Who is likely to split on them? The result will be that the real culprits in this matter will go untouched. An. hon. Member says, "Not likely," but then what has happened during the existence of the Ministry of Food? Long before this-Parliament, for three years, every power sought by the Government was conceded" by the House of Commons, and the Ministry of Food was denied no power that it asked. D.O.R.A. was put into operation and that gave unlimited power to any Government Department. Is it not ridiculous, after nearly five years, with known profiteering and with the complaints of profiteering, that a Minister speaking in support of this Bill this afternoon should say that one of the first necessities of the Bill was in order that an investigation might be made. What has been happening for all these years? What have the Departments been doing? What were they set up for and what is the staff at their disposal doing? I submit it is too late to come to the House of Commons at
this time, with the known cases of profiteering, and suggest that investigation is necessary at this time of day. The Select Committee, who after all are responsible to this House, ought to go on with their work. The Government have powers to-day which are not exercised. We can have a series of Interim Reports from that Committee and the Government can put those into operation under D.O.R.A. My right hon. Friend opposite says, "No," but whenever the Government want power they take it and they always bring D.O.R.A. to their rescue. Surely on an urgent matter of tins kind, with so much dissatisfaction and unrest, every step ought to foe taken to deal effectively with profiteering! Because we believe that this Bill does not go far enough and will disappoint the people, and when it disappoints the people will cause far more dissatisfaction than if nothing had been done, we intend to move Amendments in Committee stage. Our -difficulty is as to whether we ought to re-'fuse a Second Reading to the Bill. Nothing, in our opinion, has been said in favour of the Bill. But," on the other hand, the difficulty is whether we ought to take the step on Second Reading of refusing to give consideration to a measure that might be amended in Committee. We intend to amend the Bill if we can in Committee. We believe that it ought to be amended and that it will not do in its present form what has been urged in its favour. If it did what the Parliamentary -Secretary intimated in his speech, it would indeed be a better Bill than it is now. I can only repeat that we will give a Second Reading to the Bill, not because we believe it to be a good Bill. We believe it to be a bad Bill, but we will make some effort to amend it in Committee. Above all, we would urge the House to take note of what after all is an undoubted fact, that of all the causes of unrest profiteering is probably worse than all others. It is not only worse because the people feel that there are men taking advantage of the sacrifices of others, but it enables other people to take advantage of profiteering to make the task of the workers far more difficult than it is. Because we believe that the Government ought to deal with this question, and because we believe it must be dealt with, we will give support to the Second Reading, reserving the right in Committee stage to move Amendments which in our
judgment will strengthen the scope of the Bill, and we hope deal with the cause which the House generally has agreed ought to be dealt with.

The MINISTER of LABOUR (Sir Robert Horne): There is one thing this Debate has made perfectly clear, and that is that profiteering is an admitted evil in this country at present. In the words which the right lion. Gentleman (Mr. Thomas) uttered before he sat down he described in grave language the evil which he believed to exist. It is at present one of the most active causes of unrest which exist amongst the labour population of this country. As the Minister of Labour evidence of this fact is constantly being brought to my notice. The commonest articles of daily consumption have reached prices which make it sometimes almost impossible to acquire them. A reel of cotton which used to be 1 ½ d. before the Wail is now 7½d. Boots are three times their ordinary price, and the cost of woollen clothing at times reaches such a price that people find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to adequately clothe themselves. There is an admitted evil and we have got to find a remedy. This Bill is the Government's remedy for this evil. We do not profess that it is a complete remedy. Nobody in his senses would suggest that it is a perfect Bill or that it will do all that many of us would like to see accomplished. But to all people who have that complaint to make I venture to suggest that they should draft their Bill and I will undertake to find more holes in it than they have discovered in this Bill. I have listened to a considerable portion of this Debate, and I do not think that there is a single objection which has been stated to the Bill which had not already occurred to our selves. The topic with which we are dealing is a very elusive one and the difficulties of dealing with it effectively are very great. In the meantime we propose this measure. We do not suggest it is permanent. It is only to last for six months and the country in the meantime will not be entirely defence less. On the other hand, the Committee which was set up will remain in being and I hope that it will give due consideration to the evil which we to-day have been considering, and that it will discover after more thought and reflection the best measures which can be taken for the purpose which I am sure we all wish to see achieved. One of the main difficulties which was raised early in the Debate by the hon. Member
for Hornsey was a legal one winch he specially asked me to take note of. He said that this is the first time that it has ever been made a criminal offence for a man to do anything which you cannot exactly define, and he said it outraged all the principles of English law. I would ask the House to remember what would have to happen under this Bill before you got the length of charging a man with an offence for which penalties could be imposed. In the first place, you may have the Board of Trade considering the circumstances of the case, and if the Board of Trade think it sufficiently serious, not just taking the ordinary method of asking the man to take what they regard as a reasonable price, but sending it to a Court of summary jurisdiction. Or again, if one of the tribunals which is set up under the Bill comes to the conclusion that it is not enough for them simply to ask the offender the remit the balance of the excess over the true price, they again may remit the matter to a Court of summary jurisdiction to be dealt with, and only before that Court can a man be dealt with penally.
It is inconceivable, in the first place, that either the Board of Trade or these tribunals are going to report a matter to a Court of summary jurisdiction unless the case is one in their view sufficiently serious to have penalties imposed. But in answer to the general complaints that profiteering has never been defined, I would venture to suggest this. The hon. Member for Hornsey described profiteering as a gross offence. If it is a gross offence he surely knows what it means. The hon. Member for the Edge Hill Division of Liverpool (Sir W. Rutherford) said that in his view for anybody to take an illegitimate profit in these days was to commit a most heinous offence, but again, if that is true, he must know what it means to take an illegitimate profit, and if those two hon. Gentlemen are so well apprised of what this matter really means, would it be impossible for them to sit upon one of these committees and decide whether an illegitimate profit has been taken or whether a gross offence is being committed? The real fact is this, that we are only confused because for the first time this thing that we all object to so much has taken place. We have never been in this particular condition before— at least, not in our lives. We have never known the prices raised to the great height to which they are being raised to-
day, with such a shortage of commodities in this country, and these are the conditions under which we are compelled to face this difficulty. Juries every day in. this country are deciding matters equally indefinite, but equally easy to decide. There is not, I should imagine, a single jury sitting from day to day in this country that has not at some stage got to decide whether a man has acted reasonably or not. Somebody said in the course of the Debate that that only occurs in civil cases, but the term "reasonable" is as well known in the criminal as it is in the civil law. Under the licensing Statutes a licence holder may be prosecuted if he gives certain classes of people more than a reasonable refreshment. Is it easier to decide what a reasonable refreshment is than to decide what is a reasonable profit?

An HON. MEMBER: What Section of the Licensing Act is that?

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Sir R. HORNE: I have not the particular Section by me, but the hon. Member will find it in the Licensing Act of 1910, and the offence is in connection with a certain class of ladies who sometimes, frequent public-houses, and it is in connection with them that reasonable refreshment is referred to, and you will find other instances of the same thing in the Licensing Act, which provides that the licensee may be penalised if he does not take reasonable precautions in his bar against drunkenness; and again, under the Locomotives Act, it is a crime to drive at an unreasonable speed, having regard to the conditions of the traffic. There is an entirely indefinite offence with regard to which a judge has got to make up his mind, and those hon. Members opposite who belong to the great coal industry know that under the Coal Mines Regulation Act the coal-owner is found guilty of an offence, for which he can be punished both by fine and imprisonment, if he has not taken reasonable means to see that the provisions of the Act are carried out, and therefore we find embedded in the statutory law of this country this very phraseology which has now got to be interpreted again by the tribunals which are to be set up under this Bill. Consequently, I venture to say to the House that my legal conscience is entirely undisturbed by the criticism of the hon. Member. Now let me turn to the more formidable objections which have been urged by some hon. and right hon. Gentlemen-
I was surprised to hear my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas) say in his speech that the trusts and combinations were not dealt with under this Bill. If this Bill does anything, it deals with the trusts and the Combine. For the first time in our law the Board of Trade will be given by this Bill the power to make those investigations and inquiries without which no trusts can be broken up or their prices regulated and dealt with. It was suggested by my right hon. Friend the Member for Platting (Mr. Clynes) that no complaints would ever be urged or made to the Board of Trade or to the tribunals -against the wholesale manufacturer, for the reason. I think he said, that they were sharing in the profits or in the spoils, but a moment's reflection will dissipate that suggestion. If' you attack the retail man, where is he going to put the blame? He is going to put the blame upon the wholesale man from whom he purchased, and when the wholesale man is tackled upon the same topic, where is he going to put the blame? He will refer you to the manufacturer from whom he purchased, and accordingly this whole fabric of attack seems to me to be the product of a misapprehension of what this Bill really proposes to do.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Platting made a suggestion as an alternative, and, indeed, I think he is the only Member of the House who in the course of this Debate has suggested an alternative to the proposals of the Government. His suggestion was not a new one. It was that the Government should take control of all the articles that are involved; but what would that mean? We have had a sufficient army of people to take State control of a comparatively few commodities, but we are now asked by the right hon. Gentleman to take control of all the articles in common use. One does not like to contemplate the possibility of what would be involved in that project, but it would involve, as he foresaw, control of prices—that you would, in fact, have to fix flat prices. I venture to submit that that is the worst way possible, and a most unfair and an unjust way, because the conditions of purchase and sale vary so much all over the country, and what you applied to one might be very unjust if applied to another. Accordingly, you cannot deal with this matter on the principle of fixing flat prices. My hon.
and gallant Friend below the Gangway suggested that you should fix maximum prices. What does that mean As soon as you fix maximum prices you fix minimum prices, for the only result would be to make your maximum the flat price, which would mean a combination of both evils I have suggested.

Lieut.-Colonel W. GUINNESS: Is the right hon. Gentleman not arguing from war conditions, where supplies, as well as prices, were controlled, and where there was no competition to keep down prices below the maximum

Sir R. HORNE: The very reason for this Bill, if my hon. and gallant Friend reflects, is that there is a shortage of commodities, and, therefore, just that absence of competition which makes it necessary to deal, as we propose to deal, with the evils which have arisen. I think I have dealt with the main argument by which this Bill has been opposed. I should like to say, before sitting down, that I think it will serve both a positive and a negative purpose. Positively, I believe it will succeed in finding out the profiteer and in dealing with him effectively. But I think there is also an advantage to be gained negatively from this Bill. I am perfectly certain a great many people to-day believe that profiteering is taking place in instances where prices have been regulated by circumstances entirely out of the control of the people who are selling the articles. It is undoubted that the prices of many raw materials have gone up from perfectly natural economic causes. It is also undoubted that many of the prices of articles to-day are due almost entirely to the rise in wages. I do not think anyone will doubt that, and, accordingly, one of the services which I hope this Bill will render will be to create such inquiries into the facts as will make people understand, not only the cases in which profiteering takes place, but the cases in which it does not take place. I hope, finally, it will bring home to the mind of everybody that nothing raises prices so much as shortage of output, and that an increased production is the best hope of reducing the cost of articles which we require in this country. I venture to ask the House to give a Second Reading to this Bill now. There is much else to do to-night, and Members will have an opportunity of dealing with the Bill in Committee. The Government intend to move that it be committed to a Committee of the Whole
House, and, accordingly, there will be every opportunity for Members to move the Amendments which they would like to suggest.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether this Bill is intended to deal, or will deal, with landlords?

Sir R. HORNE: I think that is dealt with by the measures passed by the House connected with the acquisition of land.

Mr. BILLING: Before the House divides on this Bill I am sure hon. Members will feel renewed confidence in the Government by the statement of the right hon. Gentle-man that the whole House will have the opportunity of suggesting Amendments in Committee. But there are one or two points which, while they are fresh in our minds, it is just as well should be stated. I am sure the House is grateful to the right hon. Gentleman who has just resumed his seat for the points he has put forward, and which, so far as I am aware, have not been mentioned in the course of this Debate. The first is this, that the real reason of this Bill, so far as he sees it —I will not go the length of saying so far as all members of the Government seeit—is eventually to trace the source of profiteering. He tells us—and it is for that reason I propose to support this Bill—that directly the retailer is penned in a corner he will turn to the wholesaler, and directly the wholesaler is penned in a corner he will turn to the combine, and it is then, and then alone, that we shall get to the true source and the true profiteer. It has been said that it is difficult to find a profiteer. I say it is very simple. It is not the grocer who is obliged to put 2d. on a tin of salmon, but the man who buys cargoes of salmon between Canada and here and turns them over at 300 per cent, before the retailer can get in. These are the people we want to find, and they are the people I at first feared would shelter behind this Bill. In the first instance, when this Bill was introduced, I thought it was purely a flag to be waved on the eve of the adjournment of the House in the face of a deluded public, because they felt aggrieved at the price they were called upon to pay for commodities. But if the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down speaks for the Government, he is telling this House that the Government seriously mean to trace profiteering to its
source. A number of examples of profiteering have been given this evening. I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman considers the Crown property which is now falling in, on which rentals have been increased from 500 to 600 per cent, is profiteering?
The whole question of increase of price requires the careful revision of the Government, and when the right hon. Gentleman stated that it was the sole or principal cause of unrest in this country he was stating a cold truth. Profiteering is the apple in the garden of England, and it is likely to be the cause of more-unrest than any other matter. The Minister of Labour told us in that frank method of address of his, which is so refreshing in this House, that the true cause was the lack of production. In the last ten days, when I rebuked a certain shipbuilding concern for the lack of work they were turning out in regard to something in which I was personally interested, they told me in the last ten days one of the workmen had been fined £3 by his society for turning out more work than the society considered it expedient any one man should turn out. [Hon. Members: "Shame!"] I do not want to refer to the actual firm, but I am quite willing to give the name to any Labour Member. It was a question of caulking—as to how many feet per day one man should caulk—and it was freely stated that the amount the society allowed per day was something like a quarter of what it was before the War, and because he had exceeded that he was, fined £3 by his society. I would say to the Labour Benches, if you think this country is going to survive in international competition or defeat profiteering in such circumstances you are greatly mistaken.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: I have seen Bills introduced into this House to make people sober by Act of Parliament. I have seen Bills introduced to make them moral by Act of Parliament. But this is better than that. This is a Bill, so far as I can make out, to make people unselfish by Act of Parliament. So long as human nature remains what it is every man is going to get as big a profit as he can. From my knowledge of human nature that is likely to continue in spite of any Act of Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman opposite rightly said that up to now there has been no alternative to this method of dealing with profiteering. The only scheme put forward was even more gross,
because it had more interference with individual liberty than his own scheme. That is possibly true. Even if that were so I do not think it is convincing. Is it any justification for bringing in a Bill which is demonstrably unjust? One of the first canons of legislation, to which all good legislation must conform, is that any Act of Parliament should be capable of universal application, and that it should be applied universally so as riot to create a sense of injustice between those people who suffer from the law and those who should suffer but escape.
That is one of the first canons of legislation—that it should be of universal application. This legislation is not capable of universal application. Its application is going to be purely accidental, and in accordance with the complaints which happen to be made against certain traders. It has been recognised by the right hon. Gentleman that all the action taken under this law will begin by action against the small tradesmen—against the retailer. Then, as he rightly said, the retailer will have a case against the wholesaler, and then the right hon. Gentleman will possibly be able to inquire further. The very fact that there may be in one town, or in the street of that town, a man who is prosecuted, and in another town, or in the street of that town, the man who escapes prosecution, will make this law universally unpopular with all liberty-loving Englishmen. More than that. What is the alternative to this legislation?
The alternative, surely, is that we should break down all rings and combinations, which everyone agrees are the basis of the profiteering that is going on. We all know that it is the rings and combines who are managing to push up prices against the wholesaler and against the retailer. This Bill is pointed out as dealing with that. Can anybody in their senses look at a Bill which imposes a maximum penalty of £200 and say that it is going to deal with the Standard Oil Trust or companies of that description! £200 is a mere flea-bite to any of these. The only operation this Bill can have is against the unfortunate retailer who is pushed into his position owing to the high prices charged by the wholesaler. The best way of dealing with these combines is surely to allow free competition with them! At present the Government prohibits imports coming into this country in competition with the goods held by the combines. The only
people licensed to import goods into this country are in the various rings; consequently, there is no possibility of competition with them. Surely the obvious way of dealing with that evil is to remove the licensing system, and allow anyone to import, in order to compete with the combines and bring down their prices.
If you have a rigid licensing system, allowing only one fried-fish shop to be opened in one village—as is the ease at present—and you prevent a man going into that same business because the first one is close by it, then the man who has the monopoly of the fried-fish shop will put on a monopoly price. In every case the way to get at the present profiteering is to increase the competition by allowing free importation and licenses to anybody who wants to go into any sort of business whatever. [Hon. Members: "Divide!"] There is one thing only which would make me vote for this Bill— that is, if it were really going to deal with the prime profiteer of the lot behind the combines, the man who owns the land. The man who owns the land is sacred in this House, and his interests, at any rate, must not be touched. If a private person wants to start to build cottages and has asked for land let at 30s. an acre, and he is asked £300 or £400 an acre for that land, is that man profiteering? He is only asking 'about 100 times what he ought to get— that is, the value for which it is rated. That landlord is the biggest profiteer, but he will escape entirely. When land is wanted for allotments and ten times the present rental is asked, will he be a profiteer? This Government would not tolerate any interference with the sacred rights of landlords. I am told that this Bill has been introduced in view of the Ponte fract Election, and that some hon. Members are voting for it because it will be popular. When the country has had a taste of this measure, when the traders have been haled up before the new Star Chambers in all our towns, and some of them have been punished for a crime which is not theirs, and probably have been tried by their own competitors in business, its popularity will be gone. The members of these tribunals will not be people trained in the law, and they are going to be bodies similar to the military tribunals during the War. I do not think this Act will be popular, and the only part -of it that wilt be popular is the provision that it will end in six months' time. The idea that the Government think they can achieve popu-
larity by passing a law which they know is unjust and incapable of universal application is one which will not go down with She country. You start by interfering with the laws of supply and demand, and they always come back upon you and hit you upon the head. This proposal interferes with the natural competition of men to supply articles to the consumer in competition one with the other. It interferes with the laws of nature, and the laws of nature will beat you every time. If you go back to the natural laws of sup-

ply and demand, free competition and imports, then by that means only you will succeed in eliminating the profiteer.

Mr. BONAR LAW: rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put,"

Question put accordingly, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."

The House divided: Ayes, 251; Noes, 8.

Division No. 92.]
AYES.
[10.34 P.m.


Adair, Rear-Admiral
Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)
Jones, G. W. H. (Stoke Newington)


Addison, Rt. Hon. Dr. Christopher
Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan)
Jones, Henry Haydn (Merioneth)


Agg-Gardner, Sir James Tynte
Dawes, J. A.
Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen)


Amery, Lieut.-Col. L. C. M. S.
Dennis, J. W.
King, Commander Douglas


Astor, Major Hon. Waldorf
Doyle, N. Grattan
Knight, Capt. E. A.


Atkey, A. R.
Edge, Captain William
Knights, Captain H


Baldwin, Stanley
Edwards, C. (Bedwellty)
Larmor, Sir J.


Balfour, George (Hampstead)
Edwards, J. H. (Glam., Neath)
Law, Right Hon. A. Bonar (Glasgow)


Barnes, Rt. Hon. G. N. (Gorbals)
Elliott, Lt.-Col. Sir G. (Islington, W.)
Lewis, Rt. Hon. J. H. (Univ., Wales)


Barnes, Major H. (Newcastle, E.)
Eyres-Monsell, Commander
Lewis, T. A. (Pontypridd, Glam.)


Barnett, Major Richard W.
Fisher, Rt. Hon. Herbert A. L.
Lloyd, George Butler


Barnston, Major Harry
Flannery, Sir J. Fortescue
Lort-Williams, J.


Beauchamp, Sir Edward
Foreman, H.
Loseby, Captain C. E.


Beck, Arthur Cecil
Forester-Walker, L.
Lowther, Major C. (Cumberland, N.)


Bell, Lieut.-Col. W. C. H. (Devizes)
Foxcroft, Captain C.
Lunn, William


Bellairs, Com. Carlyon W.
Fraser, Major Sir Keith
M'Curdy, Charles Albert


Benn, Sir Arthur S. (Plymouth)
Gange, E. S.
M'Laren, R. (Lanark, N.)


Bethell, Sir John Henry
Gardiner, J. (Perth)
Maclean, Neil (Glasgow, Govan)


Betterton, H. B.
Geddes, Rt. Hon. Sir A. C. (Basingstoke)
Mallalieu, Frederick William


Billing, Noel Pemberton
George, Rt. Hon. David Lloyd
Malone, Col. C. L. (Leyton, E.)


Birchall, Major J. D.
Gibbs, Colonel George Abraham
Malone, Major P. (Tottenham, S.)


Bird, Alfred
Gilbert, James Daniel
Marks, Sir George Croydon


Blades, Sir George R.
Gilmour, Lieut.-Colonel John
Matthews, David


Borwick, Major G. O.
Glyn, Major R.
Mildmay, Col. Rt. Hon. Francis B.


Boscawen, Sir Arthur Griffith-
Gould, J. C.
Mitchell, William Lane-


Bowyer, Captain G. W. E.
Grant, James Augustus
Mond, Rt. Hon. Sir Alfred Moritz


Brace, Rt. Hon. William
Greame, Major P. Lloyd
Morison, T. B. (Inverness)


Briant, F.
Green, A. (Derby)
Morris, Richard


Bridgeman, William Clive
Green, J. F. (Leicester)
Mosley, Oswald


Briggs, Harold
Greene, Lt.-Col. W. (Hackney, N.)
Mount, William Arthur


Britton, G. B.
Greenwood, Col. Sir Hamar
Murray, Lt.-Col. Hon. A. C. (Aberdeen)


Broad, Thomas Tucker
Gregory, Holman
Murray, Major C. D. (Edinburgh, S.)


Brown, T. W. (Down, N.)
Greig, Col. James William
Murray, Dr. D. (Western Isles)


Buchanan, Lieut-Colonel A. L. H.
Gretton, Colonel John
Murray, Hon. G. (St. Rollox)


Buckley, Lieutenant-Colonel A.
Grundy, T. W.
Murray, William (Dumfries)


Cairns, John
Guest, J. (Hemsworth, York)
Neal, Arthur




Newbould, A. E.


Campion, Col. W. R.
Guinness, Capt. Hon. R. (Southend)
Newman, Sir R. H. S. D. (Exeter)


Cape, Tom
Hallwood, A.
Nicholson, R. (Doncaster)


Carew, Charles R. S. (Tiverton)
Hall, F. (Yorks, Normanton)
Norris, Sir Henry G.


Carr, W. T.
Hamilton, Major C. G. C. (Altrincham)
O'Grady, James


Carter, W. (Mansfield)
Hartshorn, V.
O'Neill, Captain Hon. Robert W. H.


Casey, T. W.
Henry, Denis S. (Londonderry, S.)
Onions, Alfred


Child, Brig.-General Sir Hill
Herbert, Denniss (Hertford)
Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William


Clay, Captain H. H. Spender
Higham, C. F. (Islington, S.)
Palmer, Brig.-Gen. G. (Westbury)


Clough, R.
Hilder, Lieut.-Col. F.
Parker, James


Clynes, Right Hon. John R. 
Hirst, G. H.
Parry, Lt.-Colonel Thomas Henry


Coates, Major Sir Edward F.
Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)
Pearce, Sir William


Cobb, Sir Cyril
Home, Sir Robert (Hillhead)
Pease, Rt. Hon. Herbert Pike


Cockerill, Brig.-Gen. G. K.
Howard, Major S. G.
Peel, Lt.-Col. R. F. (Woodbridge)


Colfox, Major W. P.
Hughes, Spencer Leigh
Pennefather, De Fonblanque


Colvin, Brig-Gen. R. B.
Hunter, Gen. Sir A. (Lancaster)
Perkins, Walter Frank


Conway, Sir W. Martin
Hunter-Weston, Lieut.-Gen. Sir A. G.
Perring, William George


Cope, Major W. (Glamorgan)
Hurd P. A.
Philipps, Sir O. C. (Chester)


Cory, Sir James Herbert (Cardiff)
Hurst, Major G. B.
Pollock, Sir Ernest Murray


Cowan, D M. (Scottish Univ.)
Inskip, T. W. H.
Pratt, John William


Cowan, Sir H. (Aberdeen and Kinc.)
Jackson, Lieut.-Col. Hon. F. S. (York)
Prescott, Major W. H.


Craig, Col. Sir James (Down, Mid)
Jameson, Major J. G.
Pretyman, Rt. Hon. Ernest G.


Curzon, Commander Viscount
Jesson, C.
Pulley, C. T.


Dalziel, Sir Davison (Brixton)
Jodrell, N. P.
Purchase, H. G.


Davidson, Major-Gen. Sir John H.
Johnson, L. S.
Rae, H. Norman


Davies, Alfred Thomas (Lincoln)
Jones, Sir Edgar R. (Merthyr Tydvil)
Raffan, Peter Wilson


Davies, Sir Joseph (Crews)
Jones, Sir Evan (Pembroke)
Raw, Lieut.-Colonel Dr. N.


Richardson, Alex. (Gravesend)
Sprot, Colonel Sir Alexander
Ward-Jackson, Major C. L.


Richardson, R. (Houghton)
Stanler, Captain Sir Beville
Ward, Colonel L. (Kingston-upon-Hull


Roberts, F. O. (W. Bromwich)
Stanley, Colonel Hon. G. F. (Preston)
Warren, Sir Alfred H.


Robinson, S. (Brecon and Radnor)
Stephenson, Colonel H. K.
Weston, Colonel John W.


Robinson, T. (Strettord, Lancs.)
Stewart, Gershom
Wheler, Colonel Granville C. H.


Rogers, Sir Hallewell
Strauss, Edward Anthony
Wignall, James


Rowlands, James
Sugden, W. H.
Williams, A. (Consett, Durham)


Rutherford, Sir W. W. (Edge Hill)
Sutherland, Sir William
Williams, Lt.-Col. Sir R. (Banbury)


Samuel, A. M. (Farnham, Surrey)
Swan, J. E. C.
Williams, Col. Sir R. (Dorset, W.)


Samuel, S. (Wandsworth, Putney)
Talbot, G. A. (Hemel Hempstead)
Wilson, Colonel Leslie (Reading)


Sanders, Colonel Robert Arthur
Taylor, J. (Dumbarton)
Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)


Scott, A. M. (Glas., Bridgeton)
Terrell, Capt. R. (Henley, Oxford)
Wood, Sir H. K. (Woolwich, W.)


Seager, Sir William '
Thomas, Rt. Hon. J. H. (Derby)
Wood, Major Mackenzie (Aberdeen, C.)


Seddon, J. A.
Thomas, Brig. Gen. Sir O. (Anglesey)
Wood, Major S. Hill- (High Peak)


Seely, Maj.-Gen. Rt. Hon. John
Thomson, F. C. (Aberdeen, S.)
Woolcock, W. J. U.


Sexton, James
Thomson, T. (Middlesbrough, W.)
Worthington-Evans, Rt. Hon. Sir L.


Shaw, Tom (Preston)
Thomson, Sir W. Mitchell- (M'yhl)
Yeo, Sir Alfred William


Shaw, Captain W. T. (Forfar)
Tillett, Benjamin
Young, Sir F. W. (Swindon)


Short, A. (Wednesbury)
Tryon, Major George Clement
Younger, Sir George


Shortt, Rt. Hon. E. (N'castle-on-T., W.)
Vickers, D.



Simm, Col. M. T.
Walker, Colonel William Hall
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Lord E.


Smith, Capt. A. (Nelson and Colne)
Walters, Sir John Tudor
Talbot and Captain F. Guest.


Spencer, George A.




NOES.


Archer-Shee, Lieut.-Colonel Martin
Rose, Frank H.
Wood, Major Hon. E. (Ripon)


Guinness, Lt.-Col. Hon. W. E. (B. St. E.)
Wedgwood, Colonel Josiah C.



Hills, Major J. W. (Durham)
Wolmer, Viscount
TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr.


Kenworthy, Lieut.-Commander

Kennedy Jones and Sir F. Banbury,


Question put, and agreed to.

Orders of the Day — WELSH CHURCH (TEMPORALITIES) BILL.

Considered in Committee.

[Mr. Whitley in the Chair.]

CLAUSE 1.—(Continuation of Welsh, Commissioners.)

His Majesty in Council may, from time to time, on the application of the Welsh Commissioners appointed under the Welsh Church Act, 1914, suspend the dissolution of the said Commissioners, and, subject to revision by the Treasury of the salaries of the said Commissioners and the remuneration and number of their officers, continue their powers for such time as His Majesty thinks fit.

The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Shortt): I beg to move, at the end, to add
(2) Notwithstanding anything in the Welsh Church Act, 1914, the expenses of carrying that Act into execution, including the salaries and remuneration of the Commissioners and their staff shall be appointed between the property to be transferred to the University of Wales and the several county councils in proportion to the value of the property to be transferred to them respectively.
This is an Amendment of which I have given manuscript notice. Its object is this: Under the 1914 Act all the alienated property vested in the Welsh Commissioners until 31stDecember of this year. They then cease to exist, and the alienated
property is vested in the county councils. During the period in which the property is vested in the Welsh Commissioners the expenses of administration were to be borne by that portion of the property which was devoted to the Welsh University. For the rest of the time, from the moment the alienated property became vested in the county councils, the county councils bear all the expenses of administration. Under Clause 1 of this Bill the Welsh Commissioners' life is extended far beyond the end of this year, the intention being that they shall continue in existence until they are able to hand over to the county councils the whole of the alienated property free from any charges, which will probably mean another thirty years. Unless this Amendment is passed it would mean that whereas it was intended under the original Act that the county councils should bear their share of the administration and the Welsh University their smaller share, under the Bill as it is the Welsh Universities would have to bear the whole of the cost of administration. This Amendment is, therefore, merely to ensure that the intention of the original Act should be carried out, and that the county councils, who receive a large portion of the alienated property, should bear their fair share of the administration of the alienated property.

Lord ROBERT CECIL: I was startled by one observation which fell from the Home Secretary. I only rise to ask him for further information. He contemplates the existence of these Welsh Commis-
sioners for thirty years. I do not remember exactly what their pay is, but that means several tens of thousands of pounds in payment to the Welsh Commissioners. Under the original Act they were only to exist at the outside for five years. That was the limit of their possible existence. I should like him to give some explanation why it has been found necessary to prolong their life at such vast expense to this fund.

Mr. SHORTT: The fund upon which the expense will fall will go to the county councils. It will not affect the Church in any way. The Welsh Commissioners and all parties to it are satisfied that it is the best way in which to raise the money and administer the whole detail of the Act.

Amendment agreed to

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Kill."

Viscount WOLMER: This Clause raises the whole question of Disendowment insomuch as the function of the Welsh Commissioners is to carry out the Disendowment scheme of the Act of 1914, with certain modifications. I raise this issue with the greatest possible reluctance, and I shall endeavour to deal with it as dispassionately as I possibly can, because the last thing I have any desire of doing is to stir up any of that strong feeling which I am afraid characterised our Debates on this question five years ago. But when one is confronted with a proposition that one believes to be absolutely wrong and indefensible the only course open is to oppose it. These Commissioners are to be continued in order to take away from the Welsh parish-As and dioceses the Endowments that belong to them subject to the commutation of life interests. Therefore the question that we are faced with in this Clause is whether this Disendowment is a right and justifiable policy, in other words whether these Endowments do not belong to the Church in Wales.

Sir D. MACLEAN: On a point of Order. As I understand what the Noble Lord has said he is going to open the question as to whether the Church of England in Wales should be disendowed or not. The title of the Rill is to
Continue in. office the Welsh Commissioners appointed under the Welsh Church Act, 1914.
The Act is on the Statute Book, and it legalised a measure of Disendowment of
the Church in Wales. Is it in order, on the Question that the Clause as amended stand part, that we should really go back to a Second Reading of the Church Bill which we fought out in 1914?

Viscount WOLMER: Is it not a fact that it is proposed to continue the existence of the Welsh Commissioners in order to make the Disendowment Clauses in the Act of 1914 operative? If the Welsh Commissioners were not continued in office those Disendowment Clauses would fall, and therefore the question whether the Disendowment Clauses are in themselves unjust or not is a matter for discussion.

The CHAIRMAN: I do not think that can be shown to be the case. But even so, that does not justify the reopening of the whole question of Disendowment by way of Debate on this occasion. The Noble Lord is only entitled to deal with that matter strictly in so far as it may be affected by the provisions of this Clause.

Viscount WOLMER: If this Clause is left out, the Welsh Commissioners cease to exist, and there will be no Disendowment of the Church in Wales.

The CHAIRMAN: I cannot admit that interpretation. Even so, the Noble Lord would not be able to open the whole question of Disendowment in the principal Act. Perhaps I can have some information from the Government as to the effect of leaving out Clause 1?

Mr. SHORTT: The effect of deleting Clause I would not be in the least to stop Disendowment. Disendowment would still go on. All the alienated property would still vest in the Welsh Commissioners between now and the 31st December. Therefore, there is no question of Disendowment arising upon this Clause of the Bill.

Lord HUGH CECIL: Unless peace is made with the Empire of Turkey and ratified before the 31st December. I do not think the Home Secretary will be able to say whether Disendowmentwill take place or not. If that does not happen, Disendowment will collapse.

Mr. SHORTT: That is not so.

Lord H. CECIL: There will be no one in whom the alienated property can vest.

Mr. SHORTT: It will vest in the Commissioners.

Lord H. CECIL: The Home Secretary has not read the Clause. The Clause provides that the funds are to be vested in the Welsh Church Commissioners, and, obviously, if there are no Welsh Church Commissioners in whom to vest them, the Clause becomes inoperative.

Sir OWEN PHILIPPS: May I suggest that the effect of leaving out this Clause would be that the ecclesiastical corporations holding tithe or land would be dissolved but the ownership of the land or tithe would be in the air, and no one would be in a position to collect rents or to the Therefore, the effect of leaving out the Clause does not affect the Disendowment of the Church, but only affects the ownership of the land or tithe when they are Disendowed. I think that is the correct reading.

Lord R. CECIL: I beg leave to differ. The Chairman has asked for the assistance of the Committee, and I think the position is quite clear. In one of the Sections of the Welsh Church Act, 1914, it is provided that on the day of Disestablishment the property of the Welsh Church—I am paraphrasing the verbiage of the Section— shall on that day vest in the Welsh Church Commissioners. The date of Disestablishment is fixed by another Act as "at the end of the War." Therefore, the question is whether there will be Welsh Commissioners to reserve the property at the rate of Disestablishment. If there are Welsh Commissioners, the Disendowment will proceed. If there are no Welsh Commissioners, the Disendowment Clause cannot take effect. [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes!"] It could not take effect. At any rate, that is the effect which we are entitled to put forward. The only possible way out of the difficulty is that the same point could be raised on a later Amendment, if it is in order. If the Chairman could tell me whether the Amendment standing in the name of the hon. Member for Salford (Sir M. Barlow) and myself is in order, perhaps it would be more convenient to raise the point there.

The CHAIRMAN: I am much obliged to hon. Members for helping me. I am now quite clear that the broad question does not arise on the discussion on Clause 1. In regard to the Amendment to Clause 3, referred to by the Noble Lord, I have some doubt as to that being within the scope of the Bill, but on consideration I am inclined to give the Noble Lord the benefit of the doubt.

Viscount WOLMER: In view of your ruling that the question of Disendowment cannot be discussed on this Clause, I will not move my Amendment. I understood that the question could be raised on this Clause.

Sir D. MACLEAN: Let us be quite clear about that. Do I understand that this question can be raised on a subsequent Amendment?

The CHAIRMAN: I propose to call the Noble Lord's Amendment when we reach it, within the limits within which it. stands on the Paper.

CLAUSE 2.—(Date of Disestablishment.)

The date of Disestablishment of the Church in Wales shall, notwithstanding anything in the Welsh Church. Act, 1914, or the Suspensory Act, 1914, or any Order made there under, be, for the purposes of this Act and of the first-mentioned Act, the thirty first day if March, nineteen, hundred and twenty.

Mr. HAYDN JONES: I beg to move, to leave out the words "March, nineteen hundred and twenty," and to insert instead thereof the words "December, nineteen, hundred and nineteen."
I do not know why it is proposed to defer the date of Disestablishment to March,. 1920, unless it is for the purpose of including funds which will be at the disposal of the Church for all purposes except for national purposes. Under the Welsh. Church Act of last year tithe has been, fixed for the next seven years at £109, but for the purposes of commutation tithe will have to be commuted at the prevailing septennial average. The average for the present year is £124. Next year it is assumed that it will have advanced to £136. The object of this Amendment is to-limit the expenditure of the Treasury by making the date not later than 31st December, 1919. This will give ample time and will save the Treasury at least £282,000.

Mr. SHORTT: I hope that my hon. Friend will not press this Amendment. This question was gone into very carefully. I discussed the whole matter with the Welsh Church Commissioners and the others concerned. There is a large amount of work which has to be done by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, Queen Anne's Bounty and other bodies. That work cannot be done by the 31st of December this year. We appreciated the effect of this, and when we discussed a settlement
with the Welsh Nonconformist members and the Church representatives we went upon the basis that the date of Disestablishment could not be before next year. It will not cost the Treasury anything like what my hon. Friend has said, because I am sure that if the period is pro-dated, instead of having it the 31st of March next year to the 31st of December "this year, it will mean so much rushing and so much additional expense that in all probability the gain will not be worth the trouble which it will cost. Therefore, I hope my hon. Friend will not press this. We have discussed the whole matter on the basis on which we have made all our calculations. Of course the sufferer, if there be sufferer at all, would no doubt be the British taxpayer. But 1 do not think it would be anything like so serious a matter as my hon. Friend has suggested, because the whole of the saving would not be gained as between £124 and £136, even if it is £136. By bringing forward the date and causing a rush and the engagement of an extra staff that would have to be created, the effect in the long run would be that the country would not gain at all by it.

Amendment negatived.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

CLAUSE 3.—(Provisions Relating to Commutation.)

(1)Section eighteen of the Welsh Church Act, 3.914, shall have effect as if the representative body had signified by notice in writing to the Welsh Commissioners that they have adopted the scheme of commutation set forth in that Act, and in paragraph (b) of the said Section the expression "the existing interests of holders of ecclesiastical offices in the Church in Wales" means and shall be deemed always to have meant existing interests of persons who, at the time of the passing of the Welsh Church Act, 1914, were holders of ecclesiastical offices in the Church in Wales.

(2) There shall be paid, out of moneys provided by Parliament, to the Welsh Commissioners a sum of one million pounds to be applied by them towards the payment of the sum due to the representative body under the said scheme of commutation.

(3) The annual income derived from property mentioned in paragraph (4) of the Fourth Schedule to the Welsh Church Act. 1914, shall, as respects tithe rent-charge be taken to be the amount of the tithe rent-charge according to tile septennial average computed at the date of Disestablishment as if the Tithe Act, 1918, had not passed, after making the deductions specified in the said paragraph.

(4) The annual income derived from property mentioned in paragraph (2) of the Fifth Schedule to the Welsh Church Act, 1914, shall as
respects tithe rent charge be the amount of tithe rent-charge computed in accordance with the Tithe Act, 1918, after making the deductions specified in the said paragraph.

(5) Where, on the first day of January, nineteen hundred and thirteen, any ecclesiastical office in the Church in Wales, was vacant the person appointed to hold that office next after that date shall, for the purposes of paragraph (1) of the Fourth Schedule to the Welsh Church Act, 1914, be treated as if he had been the holder of that office on that date.

Sir D. MACLEAN: I beg to move, in Sub-section (2), after the word "Parliament," to insert the words "by way of loan repayable in the year 1950."
I apologise for this manuscript Amendment. It is a consequence of the position I took up on the Second Heading of this Bill. I do not propose to repeat now the arguments I then used against the user of public moneys in order to adjust an arrangement—I will not call it a deal— arrived at between the Welsh Members and the Church, and also, I presume, between the Welsh county councils and the Welsh Commissioners appointed under the Act of 1914. My protest is this: they have no right, in any arrangement they have come to, to use public moneys to adjust their differences. The matter should have been adjusted between the parties concerned with the property concerned. What has been done here is that the necessary agreement has been arrived at by using public moneys to bridge the difference. The Second Beading being passed it is not open to me to make a Motion to leave this out, because that would kill the Bill. A point I wish to make is that we are setting a very serious precedent, which will be followed in other Bills. Someone has asked me who is going to pay in this particular instance. I am not particularly concerned with that. I suppose the county councils will pay. I do not know. Whichever of them pays, that sum ought to come back at least in the year 1950 to the public Treasury.

Mr. SHORTT: As far as I understand it, my right hon. Friend's proposal is that in 1950 this money, which is given— whether by way of loan or Grant is the same thing—by the British taxpayer for the purpose of settling this old and bitter feud, is to be repaid by the Welsh county councils. I do not know whether it is intended to be repaid by the Church?

Sir D. MACLEAN: I do not mind which it is, so long as it is paid.

11.0 P.M.

Mr. SHORTT: I hope the Welsh Members will mark that. I hope, equally, that those who are interested in the Church will take mark of the suggestion also. If it is to be repaid, it is clearly to be repaid by the one or the other. I hope those who are settling this old dispute will mark that. What is the difference between my right hon. Friend any myself? My right hon. Friend would keep open this old dispute till the year 1950, the dispute being as between the county councils and the Welsh Church as to who was to be responsible eventually for repaying this £1,000,000. That is his position to keep open this old bitter feud. What is ours? We say here is a chance to settle everything, here is a chance to raise the money which, given to the Welsh Commissioners for the purpose of carrying out this Act, will enable an old outstanding feud to be laid forever. That is what we propose. If this money is not forthcoming what is the result? You will get all the alienated secularised property of the Welsh Church vesting in the Welsh Commissioners. The Welsh Church will have lost their property and will not. Been titled to be repaid by the Welsh Commissioners, and the Welsh Commissioners will not be in a position to pay and the Welsh county councils will not be in a position to pay. What will be the result—bitter fighting, the Welsh Church having lost their money and their debtors the Welsh Commissioners unable to pay, and probably always trouble. We come and say let the Exchequer advance the necessary money to enable this to be carried out and to enable the property to be alienated on the one hand and secularised, and paid for so far an existing interests are concerned on the other. In that way you will lay this feud and start people afresh in a happy and contented mood. If my right hon. Friend's Amendment is adopted, it means that the whole dispute will be kept open for the next forty years. It will take thirty years to pay off the loan, apart from this, which it is necessary to raise on the security provided. When that is finished then the dispute would go on until it was decided who was to find the money. I hope my right hon. Friend, having made his protest, which is perfectly right, will not press his Amendment and keep an old wound open and prevent the settlement of an old and bitter feud.

Amendment negatived.

Lord R. CECIL: I beg to move, in Subsection (2), after the word "them" ["applied by them"], to insert the words "in the first place so that having, regard to the-provisions of this Act the representative body may receive the value of the whole of the property not transferred to the representative body by Section eight of the Welsh Church Act beyond that due to the representative body under the scheme of commutation, and in the second."
The proposal here is to provide £1,000,000' in order, as the Home Secretary very fairly admitted, to relieve the county councils of certain obligations into which they entered under the Act of 1914, or-to make it easier for them to fulfil that obligation. I did not take part in the discussion on the last Amendment, and while I have no doubt there was a good deal of force in the observation of the Home Secretary, I wish to disclaim all responsibility for this particular method of dealing with the difficulty, and I can quite understand why some hon. Members feel a difficulty in accepting it. A million pounds is to be given, and it seems to me that the question for the Committee to consider is what would be the best means of applying that £1,000,000. Ought it to be applied to the benefit of the county councils and the University of Wales, or ought it to be applied for the benefit of the Church? That is the real issue raised; by this Amendment. I venture to submit that it ought to be applied, if you are going to settle this question, in the way most just to all the parties concerned. The question of what is most just depends a little, if not entirely, on the view you take upon the justifiability or Disendowment of the Welsh Church. I am not going to argue that at any length. I ventured to say something about it on Second Reading, and I do not know that I have anything very much to add. I have, never been able to conceive—I say so quite frankly—on what possible theory of the proper dealing by Parliament with public or semi-public funds, or, for the-matter of that, with private funds, it can be defended to deprive the Church of funds which by admission it is using strictly in accordance with its duty to the community and to give those funds to somebody else. The case has always appeared to me to be overwhelming. I am not going into the elaborate, lengthy, and historical arguments we had on the old controversy as to how these funds originally became attached to the Church. I remember there was a great deal said about' what happened seven or eight hundred
years ago, or more than that, and as to what a certain gentleman called Giraldus Cambrensis did or did not say seven or eight hundred years ago. To my mind, the whole of these arguments, although I think they went in favour of the Church, are perfectly irrelevant. The point is— and no one can dispute it—that these funds have been, I will not say the property of, but applied by, the Church, for Church purposes, for centuries, and there is no question or dispute possible about it, and if there is to be any justification for the doctrine, which runs through the whole of our law and the whole of the law of every civilised people, that you are not to deprive any one of property which they have enjoyed for a certain number of years, because the evil under those circumstance of deprivation is much greater than any possible advantage to the community, then the right of the Church to this property is overwhelming.
I confess that, to me, an excellent illustration of the kind of absurdities to which you are driven if you take property which is applied to a definite and, as I think, a very high purpose, a definite religious purpose, as this property is, and give it to others, was the little incident that occurred at the beginning of this Committee. The Home Secretary suddenly said he proposed to prolong the life of the Welsh Commissioners for thirty years. What docs that mean? I do not know what the Welsh Commissioners are paid, or what they cost, but I believe I shall be easily within the mark if I say they cost £2,000 a year. That means to say that you are going to allot, out of funds which are at present applied to religious purposes, a sum which at the end of thirty years, will amount to £60,000, for j mere machinery, and to no public ad- I vantage at all. Can anything be more shocking, to those who take a certain view of this question, than such a way of dealing with funds applied to religious purposes? I venture to ask that the Committee, even at the eleventh hour, will take what I believe to be a sound, just, and, as I think, politic view of this question. Let them not soil their hands by taking away property which at present is used for the highest possible purpose, and putting it to any other purpose whatever. This is not a question of raking-up any settlement. If this is passed, there is no reason 'why the settlement should not go forward, and be as final as it would be in the Bill. It
would be for the House of Commons to decide then what was the right way of arriving at a settlement. The principles of the settlement, if there are any, would remain. The only thing would be that the House of Commons would say that in their judgment the Church ought not to suffer pecuniarily in this matter at all. it is far from my purpose to delay matters on this Bill. I wish to obtain the decision of this Committee on this particular question of principle, and since, in my view, it is a question in which every Member of the House ought conscientiously to take his own view and his own stand, I shall divide the House upon this Amendment.

Mr. SHORTT: If this Amendment were carried, not only would it repeal the whole of the Disendowment Clauses of the Act of 1914, but even if it did not do that, it, would make absolutely impossible the proposal which we have put forward by means of this fund to carry out the proposed settlement. Under the Bill as it stands we propose that £1,000,000 should be advanced by the State for the purpose of carrying out the commutation provisions of the Act of 1914—that is to say, the life interests of the existing holders of beneficiaries, and so on, are to be commuted and paid for, but my right hon. and learned Friend proposes that only should the life interest of the existing holder be paid for, which might be a matter of two or three years' purchase, having regard to his age and so on, but that the capitalised value of the tithe is to be paid for. So that you might have the tithe rent-charge held by an incumbent who was so old that his existing interest was worth two or three years' purchase, whereas the capitalised value of the tithe, might be twenty-five years' purchase. The result would be that the £1,000,000 would not even carry out the proposals which my right hon. and learned Friend would desire. On the one hand, it might lead to the entire repeal of the Act of 1914, and certainly everyone of us who was elected to support this Coalition Government was pledged against the reopening of the question, and, in the second place, even if we did not do that, it absolutely would make it impossible to carry out the proposals we put forward in this Bill. It would mean that the whole £1,000,000 would be swamped up and the Church would find itself in the same position, and all the evils we seek to avert would be re-established. Therefore, I ask the House not to accept this Amendment.

Lord HUGH CECIL: I do not think my right hon. Friend really answers the case for the Amendment. It is quite true the Amendment would set up a different solution of the difficulty from the one founded by the Government. The solution founded by the Amendment is that the Church should be reimbursed for all the Endowments they lose under the principal Act. That is a solution which evidently cuts at the root of the whole difficulty and puts an end to it. The Government method is that the county councils should be financed for the purpose of meeting the provisions of the principal Act in regard to the life interest. The issue, therefore, raised is, which of the two ways out of the chaos and robbery is the better? Having started to steal some one else's property— the Church's property—in 1914, is it better to get out of the absurdities, contradictions, and incoherencies in which that undertaking has landed the Government, by restoring the stolen goods, or is it better to make some provision by which the commutation Clauses of the Act may not be inoperative and life interests may be respected? In our view there is no doubt on a choice so profound. We think the Church is eatitled to its Endowments. We think, as, of course, I think the largest part of the Government think, or a very large part, that the original proposal was robbery and was injurious to religion. We still think that which the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the party used to think before he joined the Coalition, or, rather, what he still thinks but no longer feels able to act up to. We, who are in a position to more independence and less responsibility, are not bound by our political connections to carry out this robbery. Accordingly we think the best way is to restore the property stolen, and so avert the injury to religion which is being consummated. That is the case we put before the Committee. I am persuaded that the Government will get their way. They generally do. But I do not think they will get their way without that loss of esteem that belongs to those who, willingly and knowingly, set their hands to an enterprise which their own lips have declared to be disgraceful, but which they lack courage and moral rectitude to turn away from.

Colonel Sir R. WILLIAMS: I cannot give a silent vote on this occasion. I shall certainly vote against this Amendment, and I should like to tell the Committee
why. It is raising the whole question of Disendowment over again by what I, by no ill-feeling a tall, would describe as a side-wind. But the original Act has been passed. It is an abominable Act. It is an Act which I regard as a disgrace to those who passed it. Nevertheless it was passed! It is quite obvious that the course of the War has altered the matter. If ever a Unionist Government came in it would be bound, by every sacred pledge, to try and repeal the Act. But we have not got a Unionist Government—nothing like it! On the contrary, I and practically every other member of the Coalition party, put aside our private feelings that we might support the Coalition—not for prewar purposes, but for altogether new purposes, for purposes of reconstruction after the War, with which the Welsh Church has nothing to do. It so happens that the War was prolonged beyond expectation, and certain circumstances have followed upon the War, and with regard to the Welsh Church—I call it now the Welsh Church, not the Church in Wales—an Act has been brought in to obviate some of these difficulties. To say because of this we should raise again the whole question of Disestablishment is manifestly absurd. To say that in not doing all this that is suggested and not to raise anew the question of Disendowment is to be false to our pledges, and false to our convictions about Disestablishment, is—I do not like to use the word—practically a caricature of the situation. I am one of those who regard the Disestablishment of the Welsh Church not only as robbery, but sacrilegious robbery. I am very sorry to see that in regard to certain questions to be raised in this Debate certain other grievances connected with glebe lands and churchyards are put down by Unionists Members. I had hoped that the Christian conscience of Welshmen would have made that concession and removed that grievance themselves, and I am disappointed that those Amendments have not come from Welshmen. I entirely repudiate the suggestion which has been put forward by the Noble Lord (Lord H. Cecil), and I do so on behalf of a great many members of the Church of England who feel as I do, that it is not fair to re-raise the whole question of Disendowment now. This Bill has been brought in to carry out an arrangement made with the Welsh Church on the one side and the Welsh county councils on the other. I hate the whole of the Disendowment Clauses, but I
feel perfectly free to vote against this; Amendment in order to carry out that arrangement.

Major E. WOOD: The last thing I should, think of doing would be to criticise what ever opinion might be held by my hon. and gallant Friend (Sir R. Williams), although I profoundly differ from him for this reason. I hold the same view as my Noble Friends as to the absolutely unjustifiability

of Disendowment. That being my view, how can I in any way reconcile my conscience not to take every step I can as long as the matter is before the House to register my protest against it?

Question put, "That those words be there inserted."

The Committee divided: Ayes, 31; Noes, 159.

Division No. 93.
AYES.
[11.25 p.m.


Ainsworth, Captain C.
Hills, Major J. W. (Durham)
Perkins, Walter Frank


Balfour, George (Hampstead)
Hoare, Lt.-Col. Sir Samuel J. G.
Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel


Betterton, H. B.
Hurst, Major G. B.
Sprot, Colonel Sir Alexander


Campion, Colonel W. R.
Law, A. J. (Rochdale)
Stanier, Captain Sir Beville


Carew, Charles R. S. (Tlverton)
Lloyd, George Butler
Tryon, Major George Clement


Cecil, Rt. Hon. Lord H. (Oxford Univ.)
Lort-Williams, J.
Ward-Jackson, Major C. L.


Cecil, Rt. Hon. Lord R. (Hitchin)
Mount, William Arthur
Wheler, Colonel Granville C. H.


Cobb, Sir Cyril
Murray, Major C. D. (Edinburgh, S.)
Wolmer, Viscount


Green, J. F. (Leicester)
Newman, Sir R H. S. D. (Exeter)



Greene, Lt.-Col. W. (Hackney, N.)
Norris, Colonel Sir Henry G.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Major E.


Gretton, Colonel John
Pennefather, De Fonblanque
Wood and Capt. Ormsby-Gore.


Guinness. Lt.-Col. Hon. W.E. (B. St. E.)






NOES.


Agg-Gardner, Sir James Tynte
Glyn, Major R.
Parker, James


Amery, Lieut-Col. L. C. M. S.
Gould, J. C.
Parry, Lt.-Colonel Thomas Henry


Atkey, A. R.
Grant, James Augustus
Pease, Rt. Hon. Herbert Pike


Baldwin, Stanley
Greame, Major P. Lloyd
Peel, Lt.-Col. R. F. (Woodbridge)


Barnes, Major H. (Newcastle, E.)
Green, A. (Derby)
Perring, William George


Barnett, Major Richard W.
Greenwood, Col. Sir Hamar
Philipps, Sir O. C. (Chester)


Barnston, Major Harry
Gregory, Holman
Pollock, Sir Ernest Murray


Beauchamp, Sir Edward
Greig, Colonel James William
Pratt, John William


Beck, Arthur Cecil
Grundy, T. W.
Pulley, Charles Thornton


Bell, Lieut.-Col. W. C. H. (Devizes)
Hacking, Captain D. H.
Purchase, H. G.


Bellairs, Com. Carlyon W.
Hailwood, A.
Raffan, Peter Wilson


Bonn, Sir Arthur S. (Plymouth)
Half, F. (Yorks, Normanton)
Raw, Lieut.-Colonel Dr. N.


Blades, Sir George R.
Hamilton, Major C. G. C. (Altrincham)
Roberts, F. O. (W. Bromwich)


Borwick, Major G. O.
Henry, Denis S. (Londonderry, S.)
Robinson, S. (Brecon and Radnor)


Brace, Rt. Hon. William
Hilder, Lieut-Col. F.
Robinson, T. (Stretford, Lancs.)


Briant, F.
Hinds, John
Rogers, Sir Hallewell


Briggs, Harold
Hirst, G. H.
Rutherford, Sir W. W. (Edge Hill)


Britton, G. B.
Holmes, J. S.
Samuel, A. M. (Farnham, Surrey)


Broad, Thomas Tucker
Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)
Samuel, S. (Wandsworth, Putney)


Brown, T. W. (Down, N.)
Howard, Major S. G.
Sanders, Colonel Robert Arthur


Buchanan, Lieut.-Colonel A. L. H.
Hughes, Spencer Leigh
Seager, Sir William


Buckley, Lieutenant-Colonel A.
Hunter, Gen. Sir A. (Lancaster)
Seely, Maj.-Gen. Rt. Hon. John


Cape, Tom
Hunter-Weston, Lieut.-Gen. Sir A. G.
Shaw, Tom (Preston)


Carr, W. T.
Hunt, P. A. 
Shaw, Captain W. T. (Forfar)


Carter, W. (Mansfield)
Inskip, T. W. H.
Short, A. (Wednesbury)


Casey, T. W.
Jameson, Major J. G.
Shortt, Rt. Hon. E. (N'castie-on-T., W.)


Clay, Captain H. H. Spender
Jesson, C.
Smith, Capt A. (Nelson and Colne)


Clough, R.
Johnson, L. S.
Stanley, Col. Hon. G. F. (Preston)


Coates, Major Sir Edward F.
Jones, Sir Edgar R. (Merthyr Tydvi')
Stephenson, Colonel H. K.


Colvin, Brig.-Gen. R. B.
Jones, Sir Evan (Pembroke)
Stewart, Gershom


Cope, Major W. (Glamorgan)
Jones, G. W. H. (Stoke Newington)
Strauss, Edward Anthony


Cory, Sir James Herbert (Cardiff)
Jones, Henry Haydn (Merioneth)
Sugden, W. H.


Davidson, Major-Gen. Sir John H.
Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen)
Sutherland, Sir William


Davies, Alfred Thomas (Lincoln)
Jones, William Kennedy (Hornsey)
Talbot, G. A. (Hemel Hempstead)


Davies, Major David (Montgomery Co.)
Kenworthy, Lieut-Commander
Terrell, Capt. R. (Henley, Oxford)


Davies, Sir Joseph (Crewe)
King, Commander Douglas
Thomas, Rt. Hon. J. H. (Derby)


Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)
Knight, Capt E. A.
Thomas, Brig.-Gen. Sir O. (Anglesey)


Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan)
Knights, Capt. H.
Thomson, F. C. (Aberdeen, S.)


Dawes, J. A.
Law, Right Hon. A. Bonar (Glasgow)
Thomson, T. (Middlesbrough, W.)


Dennis, J. W.
Lewis, Rt. Hon. J. H. (Univ., Wales)
Thomson, Sir W. Mitchell- (M'yhl)


Deyle, N. Grattan
Lewis, T. A. (Pentypridd, Glam.)
Thorne, G. R, (Wolverhampton, E.)


Edwards. C. (Bedwelity)
Loseby, Captain C. E.
Vickers, D.


Edwards, J. H. (Glam., Neath)
Mallalieu, Frederick William
Walters, Sir John Tudor


Entwistle. Major C. F.
Malone, Col. C. L. (Leyton, E.)
Weston, Colonel John W.


Eyres-Monsell, Commander
Matthews, David
Wild, Sir Ernest Edward


Foreman, H.
Mitchell, William Lane-
Williams, A. (Consett, Durham)


Forestier-Walker, L.
Mond, Rt. Hon. Sir Alfred Moritz
Williams, Lt.-Col. Sir Rhys (Banbury)


Foxcroft, Captain C.
Morison, T. B. (Inverness)
Williams, Col. Sir R. (Dorset, W.)


Fraser, Major Sir Keith
Mosley, Oswald
Wilson, Colonel Leslie (Reading)


Geddes, Rt. Hon. Sir A. C. (Basingstoke)
Murchison, C. K.
Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)


George, Rt. Hon. David Lloyd
Neal, Arthur
Younger, sir George


Gibbs, Colonel George Abraham
Nicholson, R. (Doncaster)



Gilbert, James Daniel
Onions, Alfred
TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Capt.


Gilmour, Lieut.-Colonel John
Palmer, Brig.-General G. (Westbury) 
F. Guest and Lord E. Talbet.

Mr. HAYDN JONES: I beg to move, in Sub-section (3), to leave out the words
taken to be the amount of the tithe rent-charge according to the septennial average computed at the date of Disestablishment, us if the Tithe Act, 1918, had not passed, after making the deductions specified in the said paragraph,
and to insert instead thereof the words
computed in accordance with the Tithe Act, 1918, after deducting two and a-half per cent, on account of the cost of collection and the average amount paid during the three years preceding the date of Disestablishment on account of rates and Land Tax.
The effect of this Amendment if carried would be that the Welsh Church Commissioners in commuting the tithe rent-charge will do so in exactly the same manner as the private tithe rent owner is able to redeem his, namely, at 109 instead of 136. This will bring a saving of about £ 36,000 to the Treasury. My Amendment further provides, if the words as they stand are carried, that in computing the net value of the tithe rent-charge the rates shall be computed or the average amount paid during the three years preceding the passing of the Act. At that time the tithe stood at 77and the rates were assessed accordingly. The amount was very low as compared with the total to-day. In my opinion it is absolutely unfair for the public authority first of all to say you must pay at the rate of 136 in lieu of rates which wore being really paid at 109. It cuts both ways. You are computing at the highest posible sum but allowing the rates at the lowest possible figure. I went to the trouble in my own county of ascertaining the difference in the rates now as compared with three years 'before the War. I find that in that time they have gone up exactly 100 per cent. It has been calculated that a quarter of a million sterling would be required to be borne by the Treasury to meet the rates on an estimated difference of only 33⅓per cent., and if my county is a fair index, as I think it is, then county rates generally have gone up 100 per cent., and it would be most unfair that the Treasury, or the Welsh Commissioners, or the county council or whatever body may be concerned, to commute at 136 and to only pay rates on the basis of 77. In moving this Amendment I am asking not for any favour, but for justice and nothing more.

Mr. SHORTT: This Amendment seeks really to upset the whole of the proposals which the Government have brought for-
ward. May I remind my hon. Friend that the legal opinion which we have sought is that the Church is not entitled under the Act of 1914 to the septennial average-of next year, assuming next year to be the date of Disestablishment. It is quite possible —although I do not know—that in case of a lawsuit the Courts might differ from the opinion of our Law Officers, but at any rate we have gone on the supposition that they are right. We have further tried as far as possible not to reopen in any way anything in the Act of 1914. We have tried to avoid reopening anything that was controversial. We have tried to alter nothing in that Act except by agreement or unless it is of a purely domestic matter. But the question of amount cannot be described as non-controversial: it is the most controversial part of the whole thing. We have, therefore, to accept as the basis of our proposal what we are advised is the legal position of the Church; we want that regularised and adopted, and in order to prevent a deadlock and much trouble and bother we have come forward with the money proposed to be allowed in order to meet that position.
This Amendment reopens at once the Act of 1914. Assuming that the Law Officers are right in their opinion, it alters the terms of the Act and reopens the whole controversy, therefore, that is just what we are anxious to avoid. I shall have to say the same to the next Amendment if it is moved. I quite appreciate my hon. Friend's point, and indeed, one of the things to make me feel that the Government's proposals are eminently fair is that on the one hand they are opposed by my hon. Friends behind me, who say the Church is the loser and the county councils gain all the benefit, and, on the-other hand, I am told the Church gains everything and the county councils lose everything. When you are told that by both sides you are pretty sure you have arrived somewhere near a fair solution.

Major D. DAVIES: I am sorry the Home Secretary has adopted the attitude he has. I am sure the Committee will feel that the Amendment is an eminently reasonable and fair one. It is quite true it is the crux of the whole Bill, and if it is carried it will not keep the foundation of the bargain which has been arrived at with regard to this question of Endowments. We feel very strongly that this Act is not in conformity with the pledges
which were given by the Government which was in office at the time the Suspensory Act was passed, when we understood that owing to the conditions created by the War the Act, which had then just become law, was not to be modified in the interest of either of the parties concerned in the matter. Some of us at the last election made it quite plain that we were not prepared to see the Church lose as the result of the conditions created by the War, but, on the other hand, we were not prepared to see that the Church made any profit from the conditions which had been created by the War. This whole settlement could have been placed on a just and fair foundation which would have done justice to the Welsh people and equal justice to the Church. Those who voted for the Act passed in 1914, those who were convinced that it was right and reasonable and just, cannot possibly be expected to vote for this Bill. I can quite understand the attitude of the Noble Lord and his friends, because they believe quite honestly that it was wrong to take any property away from the Church at all, but that is not the attitude of those hon. Members, and especially the Welsh Members, who supported the Act of 1914, and it appears to me that the provisions in this Bill are nothing more nor less than a re-endowment of the Church in Wales out of the public funds of this country. That may be a pleasing prospect to the taxpayers in Scotland, Ireland, and the other parts of the United Kingdom, but from the point of view of those who have always contended for the principle that religious bodies in this country should not be supported out of public funds, the principle embodied in this Bill is one to which we cannot for a moment concur, I think I have said enough to show the broad grounds of principle on which we should like to see this controversy coming to an end with justice done to all the parties concerned. I do not think we shall promote a real, lasting, true settlement if one side feels that the whole issue has been side-tracked and that they have been left in the lurch before they really understood the true meaning of this Bill. I would rather see this Bill entirely abandoned than to find that public money was being used again to re-endow the Church in Wales. We have heard a great deal about devolution and setting up of Parliaments in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and the day may
come when the Welsh people may still' have an opportunity of dealing with this. matter in accordance with justice and in, accordance with the views they have always held.

Mr. MacVEAGH: I am very reluctant to interfere in this purely domestic issue, but I am tempted to do so by the statement of the Home Secretary that the justification; of the finance of the Bill is that the Noble-Lord (Lord E. Cecil) says that the Church: is going to be the loser and the county councils are going to be the gainers, whilst my hon. Friends behind me say quite the, reverse. I do not think the confusion is at all surprising, because when the Home Secretary was introducing the Bill and I asked him in curiosity who was going to get this million of money- was it the Church or the county councils he was not able to tell me. He said, "We are providing a million and a quarter of money, and the hon. Member must decide for himself which of the two is going to get it. "is that 'be the attitude of the Home Secretary, he need not complain that there is confusion on both sides of the House as to who is to get the best of this transaction. As an unsophisticated Irishman, may I give what seems to me a simple explanation of the finance of this Bill? This House decided in 1914, to rob the Welsh Church. In 1019, whether for motives: of political expediency, or from remorse of conscience I do not know, the Government decided that they were taking-too much from the Church, and that they had better give them back some of the "swag," It was arranged that the property was to go to the Welsh county councils, and there-fore: both sides had to be squared. So the Prime Minister sent for some of the Welsh bishope to come and see him. Two of them came, bringing their camp stools with them and bivouacked on the doorstep of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House for several days, and at last a deal was arrived at. The Prime Minister told them that the War through which the whole world had passed, had made a wonderful change, that the differences which seemed 'big and gigantic before the War, now seemed small when we were face to face with realities. He said, "We want to make terms with the Church now, so that all denominations in Wales may henceforth live on terms of peace, amity and brotherly love."
These two simple-minded, innocent, unworldly bishops believed him! They went away and said, "What a charming, fascinating man he is! How generous he is! How completely we have misunderstood him in all the years that have gone by!" But the Prime Minister did not tell them what he told the Welsh Members the next day. He did not say to them," If you do not pass this Bill all the county councils -will be bankrupt and we shall have to repeal this Act." He knew better than to tell them that.
He talked Christianity to the bishops, and business to the laymen, and he persuaded the bishops to believe that they were getting 9d. for 4d. He tried to make the Welsh Members believe that they also were getting 9d. for 4d., but the difficulty was that the accounts would not balance; and "he said to the Welsh Members, so I am told—of course he perorated a little in the usual way, and he brought in the valleys and the mountains again, and he said that it would be intolerable that the cloud of bankruptcy should be allowed to settle on the sun gilt hill tops and the happy valleys of their native country—"But," he said, "gentlemen, you have got to make your choice. It is either repeal of this. Act or bankruptcy and red ruin for our beloved Principality." And then the Welsh Members agreed. The Welsh Members would agree with the Prime Minister. He has got the measure of the Welsh Members, Half of them have got jobs or titles already, and the other half think they ought to have them. The Prime Minister knew exactly at what value he was to take all such, protestations as were made by the Welsh Members. He knew that with two or three exceptions, they would all troop into the Lobby in support of anything that he would propose. He persuaded the Welsh Members, therefore, to agree. But then one of them said, "What about the plunder The Welsh county councils were to get the plunder. Are we still going to get it?" Then the Prime Minister closed one eye, and kept the other oscillating, and he said, "I know another hen roost. It is called the Treasury. I will make a descent on it. I will make the Treasury pay the difference, and then everybody will be perfectly happy." Well, he seems to have made both sides perfectly happy, and so far as I am concerned I do not care how much he gives to the Church. I am not going to take the trouble to go into the Division
Lobby against it. I congratulate him on his success in humbugging both sides, and making both sides believe, that they hare got a great bargain.

Amendment negatived.

Mr. MOUNT: I beg to move, at the end, to insert
(5) If the Welsh Commissioners shall not have paid to the representative body, within six months after the date of commutation, the aggregate value of the existing interests of holders of ecclesiastical offices in the Church of Wales, as ascertained in the manner provided by the Fourth Schedule of the Welsh Church Act, 1914, and this Act, they shall pay interest on any amount unpaid at the rate of. five and a-half per cent, per annum until such payment.
Hon. Members will realise that under the Act the Welsh Commissioners are ordered to pay over as soon as possible such sums of money so arrived at, and interest thereon, at the rate of 3 ½ per cent., but the rate of interest at present is 3 rather than 3 ½per cent., and I would ask the Home Secretary to accept this Amendment so that there may be no delay in the payment of the amount of money due for commutation by the Welsh Commissioners to the Representative Body.

Mr. SHORTT: I would ask the Committee to accept this Amendment. It seems to be perfectly reasonable that everyone who is entitled to money should be paid as soon as possible. At the same time if anything occurs to prevent this being done I do not think that the persons who are entitled to receive the money should suffer in consequence.

Amendment agreed to.

CLAUSE 4.— (Further Provisions as to Welsh Ecclesiastical Property.)

(1) The Welsh Commissioners may postpone the transfer under the Welsh Church Act, 1914, of any property vested in them to any person or body of persons, whether corporate or un in corporate, other than the representative body, and such person or body of persons shall not be bound to accept the transfer of any such property until the Secretary of State so directs; and so long as any tithe rent-charge which was previously attached to a benefice remains vested in the Welsh Commissioners, the Welsh Commissioners shall be deemed to be the owners of a tithe rent-charge attached to a benefice for the purposes of the Tithe Rent-charge (Rates) Act, 1889.

(2) If the Welsh Commissioners so agree with the representative body it shall be lawful for the Welsh Commissioners to buy and for the representative body to sell to them any of the tithe rent-charge transferred to the representative body under the Welsh Church Act, 1914, at a price to be ascertained by the same method as that prescribed by the Tithe Act, 1918, for
the payment of compensation for the redemption of tithe rent-charge; and the Welsh Commissioners may determine out of what part of the funds vested in them the purchase money payable for any such tithe rent-charge is to be paid and the tithe rent-charge when purchased shall be dealt with by the Welsh Commissioners in like manner as if it had been derived from the same source as the purchase money:

Provided that if the tithe rent-charge at the time of sale is subject to any existing interest it shall be discharged from that interest, and the representative body shall be liable to pay to the person entitled to the existing interest, to long as that interest would have continued, an annuity equal to the annual value of his interest therein ascertained in manner provided by the Fifth Shedule to the Welsh Church Act, 1814, and this Act.

(3) There shall be included in the property which the Welsh Commissioners are required by Sub-section (1) of Section eight of the Welsh Church Act, 1914, to transfer to the representative body any tithe rent-charge derived from sources other than endowments of any tentative body any tithe rent-charge derived the Church in Wales, and not being Welsh ecclesiastical property, which has been appropriated since the year sixteen hundred and sixty-two to benefices in Wales and Monmouthshire.

The following Amendment stood on the Paper in the name of Mr. MOUNT: To leave out the words
(2) If the Welsh Commissioners so agree with the representative body it shall be lawful for the Welsh Commissioners to buy and for the representative body to sell to them,
and to insert instead thereof
(2) If the representative body to request, the Welsh Commissioners shall buy and the representative body shall sell to the Welsh Commissioners.

Mr. MOUNT: My Amendment is intended to compel the Welsh Commissioners to purchase, if the representative body so wish it, any of the tithe rent-charge which is private benefaction. I understand that Amendments subsequently to be moved deal with some additional property. I do not propose to move my Amendment, in order that we may get a discussion on the more important question raised by the hon. Baronet below me (Sir Owen Philipps).

Sir OWEN PHILIPPS: I beg to move, after Sub-section (2), to insert
(3) If so requested by the Welsh representative body after the date of commutation the Welsh Commissioners shall sell to the representative body any glebe or other land (other than burial grounds) vetted in the Welsh Commissioners, and by them to be transferred to the county councils or the University of Wales at a sum equal to thirteen times the amount of the annual income derived there from as (-imputed for the purpose of the Fourth Schedule to the Welsh Church Act, 1914,subject to the tenancies, charges, and in cumbrances subject to which such
glebe or other land is transferred to the Welsh Commissioners, but freed from any existing interest therein, or any charge in respect of any sum of money borrowed by the Welsh Commissioners under Section thirty of the Welsh Church. Act, 1914.
Provided that there shall not be sold under this Sub-section any laud which before the date of commutation any county borough, borough or urban district council may, with the approval of the Minister of Health, determine to be required for the purposes of any housing or rehousing scheme under the Housing of the Working Classes Acts, 1890 to 1919.
This is purely an administrative change to facilitate matters, and makes no financial difference. The proviso is intended to meet the question raised by a number of Welsh Members who are specially interested in the question of housing. It provides that the Representative Body shall not purchase any of the ancient glebe which may be scheduled by any urban authority for a housing scheme. Under the Welsh Church Act the Representative Body was given full power to purchase any glebe, and now the Church-in Wales offers this concession to meet the views of Welsh Members, and also to do all in their power to assist forward what everyone is so keen about—the encouragement of the building of houses. Anything the Welsh Church can do to help, they are most anxious to do. What I propose is that the Representative Body shall have power to purchase any glebe, subject to the proviso about housing, at thirteen years' purchase. The Welsh Church Act has already given the right to purchase to the Representative Body, and the Amendment simply fixes the price at which they shall exercise that right. As I understand it, the value of glebe was capitalised at 5 per cent.—namely, twenty years' purchase of the net value of the glebe—but such a price would be hard on. the Church, for this reason: in very many cases—in several hundreds, I believe—the incumbents have redeemed the Land Tax on the glebe, and the result is that the money expended on the redemption of the Land Tax on the glebe amounts to an investment by the Church. Such money is a voluntary benefaction in all cases where it has been done since the year 1662. The Church would not be entitled to this money, but as a matter of fairness it is strictly due to them.
12.0 M.
Secondly, all the buildings now existing on the glebe have been erected by the Church and practically all erected since 1662. The money was contributed by the incumbents
or by voluntary contributions. This is a very large sum to which the Church has no legal right as the buildings pass with the land, but there is, I submit, a very strong moral right, and it is that which, I think, ought to be considered by the Committee as it is in the nature of unexhausted improvements. If the Committee is, as I hope it will be, in favour of dealing equitably with this Disendowed Church. Then I think that this is a fair way of doing it. It will be within the recollection of the Committee that the Disestablished Church of Ireland was allowed to purchase its glebes, and in that instance I understand that the purchase price was eleven years' purchase. People in England do not know or realise the distressing poverty of the great mass of the Welsh rural clergy. Half of the clergy in the northern diocese of St. Asaph's have not £200 per year and the small glebe lands eke out a scanty living for the incumbent and his wife and children. It would not only be a fair but a kind thing to grant them this small concession. These glebes do something to bridge the gulf between classes in Wales. In the hills of Wales the small Welsh farmer is brought closer into contact with the incumbent who has in many cases a small glebe. They meet and discuss agricultural and pastoral difficulties and that tends to bring them more together. On those grounds I move this Amendment. I think the concession offered by the Church with regard to glebes needed for housing schemes is evidence of their desire to settle a difficult problem in a spirit of compromise. I am in this difficulty that we of the Welsh Church accept this Bill as brought in by the Government, as a reasonable settlement of the difficult problem. We have to face and as fairly meeting the views both of the Welsh Members, or at least the great mass of the Welsh Members, and of the great mass of the representatives of the Welsh Church. Since the Bill was brought in I understand an arrangement was come to with reference to one of the matters that I mentioned as outstanding matters in my speech on the Second Reading, and that is on the question of churchyards. Therefore, whilst I trust that the Government may be their way to accept this Amendment, I do not wish to unduly press it. That is the position which I want to put clearly before the Committee.

Mr. SHORTT: I hope my hon. Friend will not. press this Amendment. The ques-
tion of glebe has been discussed very carefully, and it has not been found possible to come to a definite arrangement on the point, and the Government there fore propose that the whole question of glebe should be left, out of the Bill altogether. This proposal as it stands cannot possibly be accepted by the Government, because in their view the terms of it are not equitable to the Welsh Commissioners or to the county councils. The proposal is that the Representative Body should been titled, as of right apparently, to purchase any of the glebe which is secularised at the rate of thirteen years' purchase, which, of course, is an extravagantly low rate, and more over the whole of this glebe is part of the security upon which the Welsh Commissioners would have to borrow the £ 2,400,000 in order to carry out the commutation scheme. This glebe would be part of their security, and before they could hand it over at thirteen years' purchase they would have to free the portion handed over from any charge in respect of any sum borrowed on its security, so that even if the Government could accept the arrangement with regard to the glebe the terms of this Amendment are not such as they could possibly accept, and, therefore, having regard to the fact that no arrangement has been able to be arrived at with regard to glebe, I hope the Amendment will not be pressed.

Sir S. HOARE: I am sorry to hear the answer of the Government. None of us wish to introduce any sort of bitterness into this controversy, but at the same time one cannot help feeling bitterly disappointed that to a small Amendment of this kind one hears a blank refusal from the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary. Without wearying the Committee, let me remind them of two or three facts connected with the question of glebe. The right hon. Gentleman says that this proposal is altogether unreasonable. As the right hon. Gentleman stated, who moved this Amendment, it is virtually the proposal that was agreed to in the case of the Irish Church. It is. There fore, quite practicable. Moreover, of all phases of disendowment. The phase which has least offended the Members of this and of the last House is that connected with glebe. May I remind hon. Members what took place in the last House of Commons? There was a majority in favour of Disendowment. But upon two occasion the majority, when it was proposed to omit
glebe from the scope of the Act, in one case was reduced to twenty-three, and on the second occasion fell far below its ordinary average. Amongst those who voted to exclude glebe from the scope of the Bill were many confirmed Liberal and Radical Members who on other points were supporting the Act. Therefore, glebe: stands apart in the appeal it makes to Members in all parts of the House. It is a very small matter from the money point of view. It only amounts to £ 30,000 yearly, or £ 11,000 if you leave out of account the life interests—infinitesimal sum from the point of view of the Government or the Treasury. It is property which has been the property of the Church for centuries. It does not raise the controversy that tithes raise, nor that raised by the ownership of churchyards. It has involved an obligation of service for centuries that has been well and effectively carried out. In view of these facts I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to reconsider the answer he has just given. I appeal, further, to the Leader of the House. I do not want to recur to the pledges that he gave in the last Parliament. I admit there is much in the contention he has made that this is not a Unionist Government, and that, therefore, it may not be possible for this Government to do what a Unionist Government might hare done. But at the time of the election he did imply that some concession would be made to the Welsh Church. Those of us who have followed this controversy in some detail and with some care urge that they interpreted that pledge by believing that the right hon. Gentleman meant that glebe should be given back to the Church. From the point of view of controversy, the concession has not a great weight, and I would again ask the right hon. Gentleman to give back this property to a very poor Church.

Sir EDGAR JONES: It is absolutely necessary to make the position clear to hon. Members who were not here before, in view of the powerful appeals which have been put forward, and to show that there is another side to the question. I understand the position to be this: It will be open for the Church to purchase these glebes back from the Church Commissioners. Under the original Act church-men can make terms with the county councils. It only wants now to bring into the Bill a fixed term of years. So we are entirely on a question of price. In the 'One case it is for the Church Representa-
tive Body to make its arrangements with the county councils, and I cannot imagine any Welsh county council being stubborn or stupid about it. I have no doubt the Church would be able to give fairly reasonable terms as a purchase price. The difficulty about fixing an average price—one you always get—is that of interpreting it in terms of years, and getting anything like agreement between equitable parties—a point the Home Secretary has already mentioned. There is also this difficulty, that you have glebe—to use as British—which has ceased to be glebe in any sense. What I cannot make out is why you leave out the urban ground which is entirely built upon! I can quite sympathise with the desire to get back a few fields around the parsonage, or some of the ground around the cathedral. I do not want to go into that now. But take the town of Merthyr. It happens to be built upon glebe land. It has been a great disadvantage to the Church, and to everyone else. It is not a question of money, but of administrative control. We cannot really run the risk of leaving the town to the mercy of any county council that comes along. But why on earth not draft an Amendment to get what you want? This is really a bad Amendment, declaring the thing to be wanted for the housing of the working classes does not meet the situation at all. So far as I am concerned, there is very little in this. Once you get agreement as to which is a fair price the rest is not difficult. My hon. Friends, I would suggest, should not press this particular form of Amendment any further at this juncture.

Mr. MOUNT: I would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary to consider whether between now and Report he could not do something to meet the point of view that has been put by the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken. We should not get all we want, or are entitled to, but it would be something. if we could get a reasonable price such as is sketched out in. this Clause—opportunity to buy, at any rate, that part of the glebe which is attached to the benefice, and to which, in rural districts, considerable sentiment is attached, it would be well. It is very little to ask. I am bound to say, after the attitude taken up by the Government, it is impossible to feel, those of us who had hoped that something would be done, as mentioned by my hon. Friend, to improve the position of the
Church toy the agreement between the Leader of the House and the Prime Minister, that it will be done. The Welsh Church Act, we find, according to the Home Secretary, is left intact. This concession should be made to us, and I ask the Home Secretary if between now and the Report stage something cannot be done to meet this point.

Mr. HINDS: I shall stoutly resist this Amendment. The Church can buy the land back at a reasonable price from the Church Commissioners, and it would be unfair for them to get better terms than they have got now. I do not like this arrangement, but for the sake of peace and harmony in our country we have accepted it, and I think it is unfair to try and get all these little driblets back in this manner. The term of thirteen years' purchase proposed in the Amendment is not fair to the county councils or the Church Commissioners. In my opinion, the fair thing to be done with this Bill would be to take this money from the Church and not from the Treasury. We are tired of this question in Wales, and let us close it once and for all. To try and get an Amendment of this sort inserted is not doing the right thing to the Welsh people, who are mostly Nonconformists attending their own chapels freely and voluntarily, and this question has been crippling us for many years. I hope the Home Secretary will refuse to accept this Amendment.

Mr. BONAR LAW: I only rise in response to the appeal of the hon. Member for Chelsea (Sir S. Hoare). I must ask the Committee not to regard this Amendment by itself, because you have to look at the whole proposal of the Bill. That is. the justification for it from my point of view. If it were true that this Bill does nothing whatever to improve the position of the Church in Wales I am quite certain not only English Members but everyone representing the Church in Wales would be utterly opposed to it. The arrangement embodied in this Bill has not been arrived at without a great deal of negotiation. An attempt has been made, and I think it has been successful, to come to some arrangement with those chiefly interested in Wales and the representatives of the Welsh people in this House. An effort has been made to come to an agreement with some prospects of peace in order to
put an end to a quarrel which has done no good to religion, either as represented, by the Church in Wales or the other religious bodies there. You have to look at the arrangement as a whole. If it were possible to deal with this Amendment by itself I would vote for it, and if nothing were, done for the Church this is an. Amendment which all who hold my view would be bound to support. There would be some truth in that contention if this measure only benefited the county councils and not the Church in Wales. If that were true, not only would all my efforts have been based on a false foundation, but in addition a very representative body the Parliamentary Council of the Welsh Church, consisting of laymen as well as clergymen, and elected for this purpose, are the most stupid people who ever undertook to make a dial of any kind whatever.
There is no disguising the fact that the real truth is that the Church is entitled, by the fortunes of war and by the change established since the Bill was passed, to-all that it gets under this Bill, but without this measure and the £ 1,000,000 given under this proposal it is utterly impossible for the Church to receive the sum to which I think she is entitled. That is recognised so fully that I am stating only a simple fact when I say that the dangers of delay and the possibility of the fortunes of the Welsh Church being left to the Act have so impressed those who speak for the Welsh Church that the one thing we want is to get this Bill through quickly so as to prevent the risk of being left with the Act as it stands. This is not a Bill to Disendow the Church, but it is a measure to enable some of the evils to be modified.
Let the House consider what are the negotiations which have led up to this. This Amendment was made by the representatives of the Church and impressed upon me by them We had negotiation after negotiation on the matter. The difficulties on the other side were impressed not only upon me but upon the representatives of the Welsh Churchmen. The whole thing was discussed on the last occasion between the one man who was authorised by the Welsh Parliamentary Committee to speak for them on the one hand and the Prime Minister and myself on the other. These proposals in regard to churchyards were put before us and discussed at length. The Prime Minister met them. The representative of the
Welsh Church discussed them with him alone. We looked into the dangers on all sides and he left me. with the view, I believe, of consulting some of his friends. He came back to me and said that he was. so impressed with the need of a settlement that, with a view to a settlement, he would agree that the Amendment should be adopted. What could I do in those circumstances? I had satisfied those who were acting for the Church that the arrangement was a fair one, and I think the Unionist party will regard it as a fair arrangement. That is expressed in the Church Parliamentary party resolution.
They still hope that these Amendments, or some of them, will be accepted, but the representatives of the Welsh Church have no more idea of going back on the bargain they have made with the Prime Minister than I have. They put it to me in the clearest possible way. If these Amendments will be accepted by the other side as they call it—by those who speak for Welsh Nonconformity in this House—we will be glad to have them. If they are not acceptable to them, we will not press them. After these Amendments had been moved I was still anxious if 1 could, but only in one way, by agreement with the different parties, to secure both of these Amendments. We have not succeeded. I hope the representatives of both the Church "in Wales and the Church in England will recognise the truth of what 1 am now saying, that a bargain was made. I do not think there is anything wrong in saying that in trying to settle an old quarrel like this our chief aim. should be to try and get rid of the ill-feeling in Wales itself. What I wish to say to the House is this: In view of the fact that this bargain had been made the Prime Minister had a perfect right to say to me, ''You have settled this; you have no right to reopen it. "I am bound to say lie has made a great effort to get an agreement between the Welsh members and the Church representatives with regard to the churchyards, and I am glad to say he has succeeded. In these circumstances I venture to say with some confidence that those who represent the Welsh Church in this Government have done their best in the interest of the Church, that the best has not been done unless there are further concessions, but that we have proved the desire of everyone to do all they possibly could to get peace where there was a sore conflict of opinion.

Lord R. CECIL: I recognise, of course, that my right hon. Friend has done what he thought was his best for the Welsh church, but the broad fact remains, and not the most ingenious Parliamentary speaking will get rid of it, that the Home Secretary has admitted, as clearly as it could be, that in point of fact the Church is only getting nothing at all except recognised rights which it had already secured by the Act of Parliament of 1914. That is quite clear, and not all the in genuity which we all recognise my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House possesses will get over it. I do not hesitate to say that in this case, as in others where he has tried to negotiate with the Prime Minister, it is the Prime Minister who has carried off all the honors. His account of what the bishops said to him is entirely news to me. Very wisely, perhaps, the Welsh bishops have acted in such a way that none of their supporters in this House were thought worthy to be consulted as to the arrangements which, were made. The arrangements have been made behind their backs. They are felt worthy to fight the battles of the Welsh Church, but they are not thought worthy of being consulted. The Welsh bishops, have played an extremely astonishing part. They had a case which was overwhelmingly strong—a position which had only to be stated and insisted upon to enable them to extort from the Government any terms they liked. They have chosen to accept nothing at all. It may be an excellent action on their part, but after all they are entrusted with the guardianship of the money which has: been handed down to them and it is no charity on their part.

Mr. FORESTIER-WALKER: The Noble Lord is not entitled to say that!

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN (Sir E. Cornwall): Order, order!

Lord R. CECIL: I regret very much that I cannot appreciate the ability of those who have negotiated on behalf of the Welsh Church, but I do not think it would be desirable to divide on this. I still hope that the Government may have an opportunity of considering the matter further between this and the Report stage. In any case, we have registered our protest against the whole policy which the Government have thought it right to pursue in this matter. To divide again would be merely to waste the time of the House, and I hope my hon. Friend will be prepared to withdraw his Amendment.

Major H ILLS: I rise, not to continue the discussion, but to ask one question of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. I recognise that he has done what he has done in a rightful manner, and the only point I wish to ask him is whether in the conversations he had with the Welsh bishops and other persons representing Welsh interests, the proposal made by the hon. Member was in his mind?

Mr. BONAR LAW: Yes, certainly !

Major HILLS: I mean the special proposal that different consideration should be applied to the urban and rural glebes?.

Mr. BONAR LAW: I meant to refer to that, but I forgot to do so. What I said about the general question applies. If between now and the Report stage it is possible for those who represent the Church in Wales, and those who represent other sections of the Welsh people, to come to an agreement on that matter also, I shall be pleased, but unless agreement can be come to so far as I am concerned I will press for nothing beyond that which has been secured.

Major HILLS: My only object in speaking is to endeavour to make the settlement as acceptable as possible, and to try and secure that no source of friction or dissension shall remain in Wales. I take it that the Leader of the House has not entirely closed the door of settlement, and that he only says the settlement must be by consent.

Sir O. PHILIPPS: In view of the statement we have just heard, I beg to withdraw my Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. FOREST1ER-WALKER: I beg to move, at the end, to add the words
all burial grounds of any ecclesiastical corporation or parish in Wales and Monmouth shire:
Provided that any burial grounds to transferred shall be vested in the representative body subject to the provisions of Section twenty-four of the Welsh Church Act. 1914,as amended by this Act, and shall be held in accordance with regulations made by a joint committee of the representative body and of representatives of the various religious denominations in Wales and Monmouth shire and approved by the Secretary of State.

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: I thought that this Amendment was to be moved in a different form.

Mr. FORESTIER-WALKER: No; I will leave it in that form.

Mr. BONAR LAW: Yes; it will be in that form now; it will be altered on Report.

Mr. SHORTT: I would ask my hon. Friend to withdraw the Amendment for the time being. The parties have, as we know, agreed to negotiate, and I think have now come to terms. Those terms require some drawing up and putting into form, and if my hon. Friend will withdraw his Amendment with regard to burial grounds to-night, the matter will, I hope, be in form and regularised in time to be dealt with on the Report stage.

Mr. HINDS: I want to say one word with regard to this matter. The Welsh Members have not accepted 'anything up to the present time. I want the Committee to know that very clearly. We have promised to consider these words when they are drafted on the lines of this Amendment, but no agreement has been come to.

Mr. BONAR LAW: I do not question that, but I have no doubt an agreement will be come to, and, in justification of what I said, I may say the Prime Minister told me that an agreement had, in fact, been come to.

Mr. FORESTIER-WALKER: I beg to withdraw. I understand that practical! an agreement has been come to; it is only a question of drafting; both sides will see it when it is brought in.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 5 (Additional Powers of Ecclesiastical Commissioners) ordered to stand part of the Bill.

CLAUSE 6.—(Saving Provisions as to Marriages in Churches)

Nothing in this Act or in the Welsh Church Act, 1914, shall affect —
(a)the solemnisation of any marriage according to the rites of the Church of England in Wales after the publication of banns in the manner customary before the date of Disestablishment; or
(b) the right of bishops of the Church in Wales to license churches for the solemnisation of marriages or to grant licenses to marry.

Mr. SHORTT: I beg to move, to leave out the words
(a) the solemnisation of any marriage according to the rites of the Church of England
in Wales after the publication of banns in the manner customary before the date of Disestablishment,
and to insert instead thereof the words
the law with respect to marriages in Wales and Monmouth shire.
May I explain to the Committee exactly what the Amendment means? It merely means bringing back the provisions with regard to marriages in churches in Wales to those provisions which were first inserted in the draft Bill as it appeared in 1912. As the Bill was introduced in 1912 it was proposed to leave the law with regard to marriages in churches in Wales exactly as it stood. An Amendment was moved by, I think I am right in saying, my right hon. and Noble Friend Lord Cave, then Sir George Cave, in this House, to try to assimilate the provisions of the Welsh Church Bill to the provisions in the Irish Church Act. This was found to be impossible, and certain agreed Amendments were come to which were embodied in Section 23 of the Act of 1814. Then these provisions in Clause 6 of the Bill were brought in, as a purely domestic matter, at the request of the Church in Wales. But the Registrar-General has made it quite clear that these Amendments as they stand cannot be brought in after Section 23 of the Act of 1914. Therefore we think it better to suggest to the Committee that we should go back to the original proposals, the proposals of the Bill as brought in in 1912, and that is what these two Amendments are intended to do, and I would ask the Committee to accept them.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made:

At end of paragraph (b) insert the words ''and Section 23 of the Welsh Church Act, 1914, is hereby repealed."—[Mr. Shortt]

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 7 (Provisions as to Charities) and 8 (Short Title and Construction) ordered to stand part of the Bill.

NEW CLAUSE.—(Saving for Divided Parishes.)

No parish situated in Wales or Monmouth-shire and which is in an English diocese shall be deprived of the right of self-determination granted to border parishes by Section nine, Subsection (1), of the Welsh Church Act, 1914, by reason of its having been separated or divided off from a larger parish, situated partly in England and partly in Wales and Monmouth shire, if
such separation has taken place subsequently to the year eighteen hundred and fifty.—[Major Barnston.]

Brought up, and read the first time.

Major BARNSTON: I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a second time."
This Clause does not touch, nor is it intended to touch, any of the man principles of the Bill. It is intended to cover only what I believe to be a unique, almost an isolated, case. My interest in the matter is that it is concerned with a parish which derived a large portion of its. endowment from my own Constituency in Cheshire, and close to my own rural home, and which formed one parish with a Cheshire parish for some centuries. The parish to which I refer and to which this Clause will refer is the parish of White well. Briefly the matter arose in this way: The parish of Malpas had two rectories, and it was arranged that When the town one became vacant White well should become a separate parish. This was in 1885. White well then received as endowment (1) the tithes of Royd, Flintshire, township; (2) the tithes of Wigland, Agden, and hall Cod-dington, Cheshire, township; (3) the proceeds of the sale of the town rectory house and thirty acres of glebe situated at Malpas, Cheshire, for the purpose of acquiring a site and building a rectory house. Thus the larger part of the endowment came out of Cheshire. It is only twenty miles from Chester; it is forty-five miles from St. Asaph. I will not detain the Committee longer because my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary tells me he is going to accept the Clause, and I am sure the Committee will agree that it is an elementary act of justice.

Mr. SHORTT: I hope the Committee will accept this. It is a very small matter. There are very few parishes which could be affected, and it is a perfectly reasonable alternative.

Mr. S. ROBINSON: This is about the fifth time this Act has been interfered with, though we were told at the time there was to be no interference with the main Instructions of the Act. This goes a great deal farther than appears on the surface. This is one parish. I do not know how many more border parishes there are mixed up in this way. I shall certainly feel it my duty to go into the Lobby against this Clause, if necessary, and I can only express my great surprise that the Home Secretary, who told some of us this afternoon that none of these Amendments
could be accepted, should come here now and accept these Amendments in spite of what he told us. I look upon this as part of the agreement we were trying to make this afternoon, and I am very sorry and very surprised that the Home Secretary, without any notice, should accept such a Clause as this, which materially affects the whole structure of the Bill

Question put, and agreed to.

Clause accordingly read a second time, and added to the Bill.

Bill reported; as amended, to be considered to-morrow (Tuesday).

Orders of the Day — PROFITEERING [EXPENSES].

Considered in Committee.

Resolved,
That it is expedient to authorise the payment, out of moneys to be provided by Parliament, of any Expenses that may become payable by the Board of Trade in carrying out the provisions of any Act of the present Session to check profiteering."— [Sir Auckland Gleddes.I]

Resolution to be reported to-morrow (Tuesday).

Orders of the Day — PUBLIC WORKS LOANS [REMISSION OF DEBTS].

Considered in Committee.

Resolved,
That it is expedient to authorise the remission of arrears of principal and interest due to the Public Works Loan Commissioners in respect of Eye mouth Harbour and of certain
claims under the Drainage (Ireland) Act, 1842, in pursuance of any Act of the present Session relating to Local Loans."—[Mr. Baldwin.]

Resolution to be reported to-morrow (Tuesday).

Orders of the Day — SUPERANNUATION (PRISON OFFICERS) [MONEY].

Considered in Committee.

Resolved,
That it is expedient to make further provision, out of moneys provided by Parliament, for superannuation and additional allowances t officers employed in prisons and criminal lunatic asylums."—[Mr. Baldwin.]

Resolution to be reported to-morrow (Tuesday).

Orders of the Day — POLICE BILL.

Lords Amendments considered, and agreed to.

Orders of the Day — PUBLIC WORKS LOANS BILL.

Read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House for tomorrow (Tuesday).—[Colonel Sanders.]

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

ADJOURNMENT.—Resolved, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Colonel Sanders.]

Adjourned accordingly at Four minutes before One a.m., 12th August.